Monday, August 6, 2012

Choosing is a Great Thing

LEE VINING, CA - JUNE 22:  (FILE PHOTO)  The f...
(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

While meditating yesterday morning, I was reminded of the first time I noticed how beautiful the world is. Do you remember the first time that you thought something was beautiful? How old were you? I was taken back to a time when I was five years old, waiting outside Knotty Oak School, the elementary school my older sister had started attending and that I would enter the following year. It was one of those warm, sunny, days in late spring when the grass is the greenest and the sky so blue. Those days seem to be made for five year olds (or the children within us no matter how old we are) don’t they? Golden sunlight filtered down through the leaves of the small maples I stood under and dappled the grass under my feet. Looking up through the leaves, I suddenly realized how beautiful the world was and how peaceful and comfortable I felt in my world. I just hadn’t noticed before.

Beauty is all around us, every day, in some form, but how often do we notice? It can be as simple as the colors in our natural world, the light that gleams in your child’s eyes, or a kind gesture from a stranger. Beauty is not the gift. The gift is being able to perceive beauty. Whenever you have a thought your body reacts with an electro-chemical reaction and produces a polypeptide, an amino acid string that is the representation of your thought or feeling. Those polypeptides are stored in the tissue of your body, so you not only get to see beauty, but you also get to embody it, to carry it with you wherever you go. First the beauty is in your world and you perceive it and then it is in you and part of you.

Unfortunately, in order to see beauty you must also have the power to see the ugliness around you. So if you see sadness, anger, violence, then you embody that as well. It can’t be helped, it is just a a natural reaction that whatever you see your body will react to accordingly. In our world there is ugliness in many places. So what is the use of having this marvelous gift of embodying what we see, if it is not only going to fill us with beauty, but ugliness and sadness as well? Are we destined to be sponges that just absorb whatever we come into contact with? The answer is that we have another gift, the gift of choice. I am not advocating closing your eyes to the world around you and trying to live with your head in the sand. But if you change the way you perceive events and people, then the physical reaction will change as well.
Beauty
Beauty (Photo credit: Rickydavid)

I am not suggesting that you give up any experiences or your awareness, because you would not be who and what you are right now without each and every experience that you have had. We don’t have the wisdom to know which experiences will ultimately be positive and which will be negative. How many times has what you thought was the right thing turned out to be the wrong thing? Sometimes missed opportunities are blessings in disguise. We don’t always know the whole plan for our lives, that is left up to our higher selves, our Loved Ones who project us into this world.

Therefore, it is better to look at each experience as an opportunity for growth and learning. When we no longer see any ugliness around us, when our perception changes, then we no longer embody ugliness or give it a place to reside. That may be the key to the spiritual belief that the opposite of truth is not falsehood, it is actually nothingness. If you do not perceive anything as ugly or bad, then it doesn’t have a place to reside, it ceases to exist. It is just a matter of perception. And that, my loved one, is your other wonderful gift, the gift of choice. When all you see is beautiful, then you will be the embodiment of beauty. Beauty is all around you and the choice of how you perceive it is yours.

Let’s keep living for peace, justice, and happiness, but when we see the opposites of those goals, let us remember that they are not the truth so they only exist in this domain as long as we allow them to be here.  They are not truth and only truth can exist in the domain of our higher consciousness, our Loved Ones.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Knowing More About Products

Traditional Chinese medicine shop in Tsim Sha ...
Traditional Chinese medicine shop in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have recently been working on a product that provides core asset tracking capabilities, but really differentiates through providing a consumer interface. Consumers can verify the origin of the product that they are looking to purchase and find out the whole history of the product and its individual components. Consumers can also register their products at the store to receive information about their product throughout its lifecycle.

I just read an article about Chinese medicine that turned out to be poison killing over a hundred people. Thousands of pet dogs died a few months back from contaminated dog food. People buy pills on the internet constantly and get watered down version. Cell phones have non-brand owner certified batteries. Cars being sold as new with used parts. The list goes on and on, all in all it's really quite sad for the customers who are powerless to do anything about it.

What do we as consumers want to know about the products that we buy and how far are we willing to interact? Brand authentication is a clear are of interest. Am I getting what I am paying for? Are we interested in ecologically friendly or socially responsible production practices? Do we want to know which actual farm the steak I am about to cook came from? Or which forest the trees were cut from to produce the printer paper I am suing? At least in the Hotel industry, you can get a general idea of what you are paying for. Quite often corners are cut, especially in the food catering services provided by Hotels. Always be on the lookout, and don't be afraid to question the origin of a product if you are concerned.

Monday, March 26, 2012

A Different Kind of Family Vacation


When a family goes on a vacation, chances of them staying in a hotel are common. Popular vacation destinations such as San Francisco, Chicago and New York all have numerous hotels for you to stay at. Each of these popular cities will have hotels that vary in price and quality, but what about going on a vacation that takes you to all three cities? A train tour is a great way to visit many popular vacation destinations at once! America by Rail puts on train tours throughout the United States and Canada. The America from Coast to Coast tour will visit San Francisco, Chicago, New York and New Orleans too! Not interested in visiting those four cities, but like the idea of a train tour? America by Rail has a variety of other train tours that stop at different destinations! They have train tours that stay on the east coast, tours that stay on the west coast and tours that go coast to coast. America by Rail also has train tours that take you through Canada and Alaska. With all of the options America by Rail offers, there is bound to be a rail vacation that stops at destinations you are interested in visiting! If you are interested in changing your normal family vacation and visiting a lot of cities, check out all the train tours America by Rail has to offer here