Whenever you hear a piece of music, or see a work of art or read a piece of writing that seems timeless and which somehow touches something deep inside you, you are experiencing a superconscious creation.
Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
It doesn’t matter where you are starting from — all that matters is where you are going. Every great life or career is the accumulation of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of efforts that nobody ever sees or appreciates. Great success is the result of countless hours, maybe even months and years, of preparation and hard work toward the goal of becoming very good at what you are doing.
Everything you do or fail to do, counts in some way. A person becomes good at his or her chosen field by improving incrementally, continuously over time. Develop a continuous learning plan for yourself, and dedicate yourself toward getting better and better at what you do.
The Enlightenment declared the conviction that the goal of life was happiness, and that if this goal could be attained at all, it was to be found in the here and now, despite the manifold imperfections of earthly life.
Xiu Yang is the ancient Chinese art of self-cultivation. The translated meaning is below:
xiu yang (修養 ) is short for xiu xin yang xin (修心養心)
xiu means to cultivate
yang means to nurture
xin means the heart
xiu yang is the practice of cultivating and nurturing one’s heart
In Daoism the heart represents infinite space, the seat of consciousness, the home of the eternal. When the heart awakens, it radiates the light of compassion in all directions.