The Fisherman and The Businessman

SUCCESS

 

It is in our human nature to desire to be successful. We all want success. But how do we measure success? 

 

This is a story about a Mexican fisherman who illustrates success in a simple life well lived.

 

The businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The businessman complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied only a little while.

 

The businessman then asked why he didn't stay out longer and catch more fish? The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs. The businessman then asked, but what do you do with the rest of your time? The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos; I have a full and busy life, señor."

 

The businessman scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and I could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats; eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the processor and eventually open your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually New York City where you would run your expanding enterprise."

 

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But señor, how long will this all take?" To which the businessman replied, "15-20 years." "But what then, señor?" The businessman laughed and said, "That's the best part! When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions." "Millions, señor? Then what?" The businessman said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

 

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, "Isn't that what I'm doing right now?"

 

-Author Unknown

 

We live in a world in which being successful means everything. Success is measured by power, popularity, control, achievement, and winning. By having more and being more we think this equals "success". The businessman measured success by the accumulation of wealth and by living a plush life. Sure, wealth may momentarily help us to escape emptiness but it cannot cure it. Only love, happiness and peace can fill the empty voids in our lives.

"Money has never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants" -Benjamin Franklin

The businessman encouraged the fisherman to accumulate "things". "Buy a bigger boat," then "buy several boats," and then eventually buy a "fleet of fishing boats." The businessman claimed all this would lead to power and status. What does all this really mean?

"Too many people buy things they don't want, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't like" -Will Smith

To me it sounds like more "things" we have, the more we have to show off our increasing ego to hide behind the insecurities because we are afraid to bring forth what we really want in life, we fear judgement and falling behind in the food chain of being filthy rich. People use the phrase, "the bigger the better". Well I say "less is more". 

Life is not a Race, but indeed a Journey. Be honest. You will get the same in return. Work Hard. You will appreciate everything that much more. Be choosy with people. Quality beats quantity everytime. Say "Thank you", "I Love You", and "Great Job" to someone every day of your life. Someone deserves to hear it.  Let your handshake mean more than what is enclosed in pen and paper. Dream your own dreams. It allows you to become that which you aspire to, not someone else's vision of you. Appreciate the little things in life and enjoy them. Some of the best things really are free.

In closing, these wise words from Waldo Emerson would have to sum up with this to the fullest on my definition of success...

"To laugh often and always; to win the respect of loved ones and the affection of children; to learn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best inothers; to leave the world a little bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed socialcondition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

 

 

"Darkness" and "The Light"

The polarities of life are extreme examples of two basic human constitutes or tendencies. There have been many ways of characterizing them. For example, male and female, intellectual and emotional, consciousness and the unconscious, yin and the yang, spirit and the flesh, sun and the moon, unity and multiplicity, light and the darkness, and so on. Each pair is a metaphor for the pulling tension of the polarities in our lives. The heading I have chosen to express this tension is "darkness" and "the light" because they are large resonant terms with religious connotations and I am not a religious man. Although I do think this subject needs to be brought up in a general unbiased context and discussed on a more regular basis. We tend to shy away from anything outside of what's going on in pop culture. Our conversations are based around useless garbage like Jersey Shore and Kim Kardashian. This piece is not to be understood as a theological concept, but rather as a symbolization of bettering my own understanding as to where we came from and how we were brought into this world beyond our mother's womb. So let's begin with the innermost part of us. The spirit or soul.

I have always wondered if there were a difference between the two words associated with inner being, 'Spirit' and 'Soul'. Since I was a child, I have always been fascinated with the idea that where is this innate omen inside of us that leads to a higher power or 'other side'. Thus, I did a little research on the conjunction of the two metaphorical mystical forces and I came up somewhat of a creative illustration of the two.

Spirit is expressed in metaphors of light. The spirit flies and soars like Peter Pan with an imagination beyond our comprehension and an age which never changes. That's why you hear the old expressions, "he has an old soul" it is referring to the ageless spirit. Our spirit longs for transcendence, to rise above the world. The spirit is 100% pure. Pure reason, pure philosophy, pure mathematics, pure light, pure love.

Soul is expressed in metaphors of darkness. It can only be visible to other spirits. The soul is not transcendent but immanent, lying hidden within the world. It prefers the twilight to the light, where things mingle and worlds intersect. In contrast to our flesh, the spirit resists disease and flees death. Soul seeks death like it's own proper realm. The soul savors death, whose bitterness is an initiation. Spirit leaps over death and its darkness to emphasize the light of rebirth. Where does the spirit and soul come from?

The spirit and soul travel metaphysically into our flesh from a higher source of power that is beyond our understanding. Buddhists call it our "Chi" and Christians call it "Holy Spirit". Regardless of the fact, quite simply we are a creation, sculpted in the perfect image of a higher consciousness much like every other beautiful aspect of Mother Earth. This is something we cannot grasp because it is such an intricate process that not even scientists have come to figure it out. Just take a look at a strand of DNA under a microscope, it is beyond unexplainable how the aesthetics of how we are created came to be.

Since we are this creation, that does not make us pure. Just like any other figure in mother nature's essence, we can be corrupted and used for an unintended purpose due to free will and the gift of consciousness. Furthermore, in us is this light and this is not a metaphor. They are real photons our bodies emit. On the flip side, darkness is not a synonym for evil as depicted in religious terms. It is a relative absence of light, and is necessary for any creation to be viewed by us. There cannot be light without the dark. Much like the rotational sphere of our universe, if we always had sunlight and no darkness, the world would rot and everything would be destroyed and vise versa. Much like how there is no duality such that one is better than the other. In every human we have been given the virtue of balance. How one chooses to use this virtue is up to free will. If the balance is distorted and the one takes ascendancy over the other, there will be no good which could come from it. Thus, if there is a God, he would have wanted us to have a perfect balance and live in harmony with the universe, mother nature, and each other. Never having excess of one thing to the point where the other is neglected. Abuse of anything, even of the light is of negative nature. We are the darkness. We are the light. The kingdom is within us and all around us. Even as illustrated in biblical scripture.

“The Kingdom Of God is within you, and all around you. ” Luke 17:21

Universal Mind Control?

A great except from the amazing book "Prometheus Rising".

"The traditional Childrearing methods are quite logical, pragmatic and sound in fulfilling the real purpose of society, which is not to create an ideal person, but to create a semi-robot who mimics the society as closely as possible - both in its rational and its irrational aspects, both as the repository of the wisdom of the past and as the sum total of all the cruelties and stupidities of the past. Very simply, a totally aware, alert, awakened (un-brainwashed) person would not fit very well into any of the standard roles society offers; the damaged, robotized products of traditional child-rearing do fit into those slots.

That is, there is a neuro-socialogical 'logic' to the illogical. Are traditional schools very much like mini-prisons? Do they stifle imagination, cramp the child physically and mentally and run on various forms of overt and covert terrorism? Of course, the answer is a un-ambiguous yes; but schools are necessary to train people for roles in the ordinary office or factory or profession, which are also very much like mini prisons, stifle imagination, cramp the person physically and mentally and run on terror (threat of loss of bio survival tickets in the form of pay checks). The permissive movement in child-rearing appeared only when it did, and has succeeded only to a limited extent, because society has always needed and still thinks it needs human robots.

Utopian child rearing will advance further, necessarily, only as society itself evolves out of authoritarianism. That is, as the accelerated changes now occurring propel us into the most rapid period of social evolution in all human history, we will then need citizens who are not robots, who are creative; who are not docile, who are innovative, who are not narrow-minded bigots, who are explorers in every sense of the word."

Declaration of Principles in Humanity

All human beings are created different FOR A REASON so we should be doing everything possible to keep it that way. Every single one of us is created individually with our own unique gifts and talents. It is the talent which drives a person to meet his/her destiny, his gift obliges that person to share with others which is good in him or her. A human being must know when to use their power for the greater good or to better the lives of someone else. The power from your gifts are not put in place to take advantage of others weaknesses.

Each of us have been granted the power to choose. For he or she who does not use this virtue, it becomes a curse. Others will surely take advantage of it and choose for you. Every single man and woman has his or her own sexual profile, and should exercise it without guilt. Freedom of self involves being in touch with one's temple. Provided he does not forcefully put himself on others to exercise it with him of course.

Each of us have our own personal legacy which needs to be fulfilled, and this is the reason for she or he is in the world. This personal legend is manifest from his or her enthusiasm for what he or she does and represents. Although at times, our personal legend needs to be abandoned for certain periods of time when ego gets in the way and takes control of the natural way of self.

Finding greatness within means believing in yourself, your ideas and your beliefs. If you have knocked them down in your own mind, you've already lost the battle. Greatness isn't a word that associates with hierarchy or status. It doesn't exist where you work, where you hang out, or what you do for a living. Greatness exists when you choose to be, choose what you believe and choose to live and die for what you are, stand for and believe in. You may never be the best but you owe yourself the best so be your best at all times and the rest will fall into place. You can never measure how close to perfection you are because perfection is infinite, rather measure your ability to deviate from negative situations and make better of your own life.

Everything in life is a choice. We choose where we work, we choose the people we associate ourselves with, and we choose the circumstances we put ourselves in, for better or worse, in major part to the decisions we have made in precedent to the right now. Everything which is done in the present, affects the future by consequence, and the past by redemption. Making a clear and conscious choice in your mind every day to act on life and embrace whatever comes our way is the correct course of action you want to take. Rather than sitting back, allowing the forces of the universe move us places we don't want to go. After all, we are nothing but floating cosmic energy in a endless mass of nuclear energy called the universe and what we choose to do with our energy transmits ultra powerful signals which either constrain or compel us on our path to enlightenment.

Attack your FEARS

The fear of self is our greatest enemy. Fear is what controls us. Fear is what holds us back. Fear causes procrastination from avoiding confrontation. Fear breeds inaction and inaction leads to lack of experience. We fear failure and are not willing to risk that failure to hurdle certain obstacles so we become ignorant to these obstacles. Ignorance fosters incompetence in life and allows room for more fear to set in and sidetrack us from achieving plateaus of self divinity. Never allow your fear of rejection surpass your joy of succession. If your thoughts are manifested of love and joy, you will become a successful and joyous person. If your thoughts are manifested of fear and anxieties, you will always be faced at the crossroads of your innermost personal phobias. Fear will always exist in some form, the biggest issue one could face with fear is letting self be paralyzed by fear, feeling guilty, thinking one does not deserve the bad which comes into their lives. Fear is an interest paid in the mind on a debt you do not owe.

Love IS the Answer

Love - (Inspired by I.N.F.R.)

Love is the most profound virtue. Words will never be able to interpret it. In my life I have experienced it, I have achieved many levels of love, I have lost love and one day I hope to recapture love again. All I know is that love is the highest praise one can give and the the most precious gift one can recieve.

Love can be found anywhere and experienced by anyone, from any culture known to man. Love leaves us wounded but love heals all. Love is all around us, sometimes we just have to open our hearts and let it in. Love is reliable because it speaks of the most humaneness that mankind knows. Sometimes it tells us what we wish not to hear but love will always tell the truth. Being deeply loved by someone will give you strength. Loving someone deeply will give you courage.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning it is a beautiful flame. Fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows, our hearts mature and our love sets in it. The flame becomes a coal, burning deep within and can never be extinguished. But as love diminishes it becomes a cigarette. Burning slow and dwindling in the wind, every breath you take, it takes a piece of you. Love fades and leaves behind ashes of regret. As the cigarette comes to its culmination, you feel disappointment and draw closer to the filter, which lets us know the love is gone. We disrespect it and throw it to the ground as a symbol to our ungratefulness to ourselves and our relationships.

Love is much like discovering a wildflower. It can be found in the most obscure of places at the most accidental of times. Unplanned but orchestrated by the hands of God. You never know where you will find it, or when it will find you. You could be on a street corner downtown, overflowing with people in the busiest of places, at the most random of times, happen to look behind for a brief moment in time to gaze your eyes on the most beautiful sight you have ever born witness to. You think your soul has recognized its match but in time you come to find that the timing was off and hope goes fluttering out the window. This leads to inevitable disappointment when our beloved turns out not to be the idealised divine figure which we adorn. The paradox is that we can only truly love each other when we also love something beyond each other.

Love when lost leaves space between, the separation brings suffering, we cannot stand this pain but this pain consummates our soul. We try to fill the void illegitimately but even the hearts greatest desires will not seal the black hole left in our soul. True love can only replenished when found again if the love is true, it will come back to find you.

Loves antagonist is desire. You cannot love what you desire, they are two opposing ideas. Love is infinite where as desire is limited and only temporary. Desires can be good but when it comes to relationships the feeling become degraded in the seeking to assure our pain we distort the image of love into inauspicious hallucinations formally known as lust. The essence of lust is to want pleasure and satisfaction through another but not to want the other. The soul's yearning for the unattainable beloved becomes the promiscuous person's attempt to leave soul out of sex altogether, diverting oneness into selfishness, substituting numerical quantity for the quality of intimacy and depth.

Men look for the imitation of love when their sexual appetite overtakes their innate omen which leads to women becoming an interchangeable set of parts rather than a whole. Women disrespect themselves and their bodies by giving off the image of debauchery, leading on men with their immoral behavior and ungracefulness to self in the way they walk around dressed up like Lady Gaga. Except instead of putting on a performance, they are the performance. Men seek for this and it becomes a vicious cycle of blasphemous behavior of promiscuous standards in which we dumb ourselves down to this so called standard you see in commonplace these days. Walking down Granville Street on a Saturday night is much like the image of pornography which butchers the beauty of women down to anatomical detail and men drool over this like they are in front of a computer screen like a 16 year old boy. Porn disenchants the beauty of its power to evoke the pains of love. We search for this because our heart becomes feeble and finds itself in a place not ready for the realest and most powerful entitlement known to mankind in love.

The consummation of desire is what we spend most of our lives seeking for it when we should be on the lookout for love instead. If we find love and it fleets from us, we long to recapture it. If we do not find it, we still try to recapture it because we have all seen forms of divinity in its essence. In closing, desire to me is nothing more than the unconscious longing for a return to that unutterable fulfilment. Desire itself is an expression of our mortality, our separation from the divinity of love in which we ache for the perpetual fulfillment love gives us and chase it until it return to us.

Love is the answer.

Erik O'Love'i Vesterinen

2:13

I, Erik Olavi Vesterinen make these 13 commitments to conjoin the 2 most profound forces in the Universe: Myself and God

(Symbolization: "Myself" = Yourself: The center of your own universe and "God" = Whatever celestial imaginative reflection of the subjective self that you choose to make it out to be).


1. I will stop envisioning a world where humanity has failed us and be the change I want to see on a daily basis, where the right way is the only way. In hopes that each and every day, one person becomes inspired and decides to make positive change in their very life. Which will ultimately trigger that person to inspire another so that this domino effect will revolutionize a brighter tomorrow opposed to the darkness that the news media, government, religion and our preceding history has made it out to be.

2. I will not let the blind lead the blind astray. I will be a leader in my circle of influence and my community to help steer people in the right direction so that they will never have to conform to the corrupt system we have all become accustomed to. A system which has been strategically put into place thousands of years ago with the intention to distract us from what is right and lead us towards mediocrity rather than fulfilling what our true soul's intentions are.

3. I will have the will power to fight off temptation because I know that if I resist today, my soul will triumph greatly tomorrow. If I can continually evade the wicked ways of the world that tempt me, I will lead myself astray of dis-eases and towards spiritual and eternal glorification. Every day is a test, it is how you choose to act which will ultimately decide your fate. Think about it.

4. I will confront my fears one by one to prove to myself that I can overcome anything that the universe attempts to overwhelm me with. What I do not confront could destroy what will become of my destiny. Instead, I will choose to bring forth and conquer what is within to save the fate of what lies ahead.

5. I will never allow the love of power overcome the power of love. Greed is the adversary of adulation and I will not allow myself or anyone in my circle of influence be persuaded into the fallacy of power. In a perfect world love will conquer all omnipotence of the governmental sacrilegious and religious leaders of our time and only then will civil rights in equality be known world wide. If we all believed this, the world would change.

6. I will learn to love myself first and teach the same to my own so we can shine love on the world and enlighten every person that comes into each and every one of our lives. I will chose to shower light, love and generosity onto humanity. In hopes that one day we will abolish alienation between people of all creed and color. Our generation will have the chance to do this.

7. I will not allow poverty to keep growing. I will not be ignorant to souls which have been kicked and beaten down in our society. I will connect with the people at their most helpless state by donating not money, but uplifting conversation and a helping hand in the right direction to steer their blind wretched souls towards a rich and healthy mind once again.

8. I will honor and respect my parents for they gave me life and sacrificed their very lives to transmit the life in which I have today. I will live vicariously through their successes and learn from their failures so I do not repeat the same mistakes. I will give back to my parents by living the kind of life that would make them proud and continuing to live the legacy in which my mother and father have passed down in my name.

9. I will not allow people to impose upon me for the better sake of themselves. Instead I will use universal synergy to create a win-win type relationship where every action ends with the reaction "thank you" and "you're welcome". I will never take advantage of another person. I will give twice as much as I receive and never hesitate to help out a friend or stranger in need.

10. I will stop working for "the man" and start working towards my dreams. I will only strive towards what I am passionate about. If I choose to work for the dollar rather than what I am meant to live for, I bring forth death and mediocrity into my life. I choose to only manifest what I am gifted with and what my soul's purpose is calling me for.

11. I will not allow others to influence my thoughts and steer me in the wrong direction. The haters, dream killers and religious simpletons will try to shoot down my beliefs but I will protect them. After all, they are mine and I believe we deserve a right to our own beliefs. Never let anyone grab hold of your dreams, you have to grip onto what you truly believe in otherwise it will vanish in the hands of others.

12. I will not allow the voices in the back of my head tell me "I can't". If I choose to believe those voices, I have been defeated. In times of struggle and desperation, I will dig deep and find the answer. Even if it means short term pain because I know in the end there will be long term gain. I will not give myself an excuse to give up on anything that my heart desires. I will not ask myself "Will this be difficult?" But instead, "Will this be worth it?". And the answer is always "Yes".

13. I will not fear death for life is too short to waste a single second living life in fear. I choose to live in the present, not the past nor the future because if tomorrow never comes, I will always know that I got the most out of today. I will throw away yesterday's sorrows, stop worrying about what is going to happen tomorrow and open up today's present because that is what life is. A gift.

I will follow through on these testaments and allow my commitments to direct necessary change which will righteously propel positive influx towards a better tomorrow for myself, my loved ones, my unborn children and the people in this world which need it more than I. I believe these bold words and audacious commitments will alter the outcome for the face of humanity and possibly make change which could inevitably metamorphose the course of our future generations and make for a lucid reality tomorrow.

One Love

Knocking on Heavens Door

I have some questions for You Lord
It seems my mind has gone into a fight
I struggle every day
I can't decipher between what's wrong
or what's right
I look for You in books
I'm heavy on wikipedia
I turned off my cable
Too much bullshit in the media
They got us thinking that Muslims plan to bomb
But real Muslims believe in paradise
and resist the Shaitan
I see a spiritual warfare going down on this earth
But You claim we are saved
If we succumb to new birth?
There are believers dying every day
This shit is real
Faith is blind like justice
When you've had your last meal
Wait or it's that blasphemy
it's logical it has to be
If I don't look like my Father then
the way I live is bastardly
Naturally that's confusion to a
young follower of Christ
Taught that if you don't know Jesus
then you lead a hollow life
Never question the fact that Jesus
was Jewish and not a Christian
Or that Christianity was law
according to politicians
I have too much on my mind
So I need to write down my thoughts
Looking through the glass
I know this is a lot to touch
Still I know enough to know
I don't know much...

Love Begins

Love Begins

The love I see in your eyes is burning like a wild fire
Firey and hot but at the same time, calm and soothing
When I look at you, you glow like the Sun
Shining your compassion and love onto this world
Because you are the 'Light'
And when your light shines on me
It burns right through me
Alas! Knowing the Sun walks this Earth
Giving me great comfort
I would intentionally walk into your hot fire
Knowing it would burn me
But even more so I would know
You inflict 'burning' passion into my life
It is you, the one who pierces right through me
And when I stare into your soul, I love blindly
'You da, you da' best I could ever ask for
There have been none greater, nor will there ever be
For you are the Heavens and the Earth
All in one
Your Light calls me
And beckons me to become my best
But tonight we die
To awake born again
As we walk towards the light together
To achieve something beyond our imagination