Podemos nos elevar sobre nossa

ignorância, podemos nos descobrir

como criaturas de perfeição,

inteligência e habilidade.

Podemos ser livres! Podemos aprender a voar!

It should never be read on the table, in the library, or in the confines of some basement or your own room. It must not be accompanied by the sounds of human voice, sirens, alarms, and technology. The sun and the smell of freedom must be the only ones who can shed a light on the pages of this book when you read it. It is because this book is about the sound emotion of being an outcast and a freedom bird, a seagull.

You will be enslaved by this book for an hour, but it will be a slavery desired even by those who are truly free. A story about Jonathan Livingston Seagull who exists in the dreams of each of us, but who has managed at infinite speed to escape the reality where he was in and soar through love in the blue sky and then dive down in the sea of kindness.

I am stopping myself from telling more, since it has only about 15 pages of text and even one sentence about the plot of this book would betray too much. I am certainly not a traitor...no...

I am one of Jonathan Livingston Seagull's student.

La vida y los sueños son hojas del mismo libro;
leerlo en orden es vivir,
hojearlo, es soñar.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Creo que más fuerte que la sabiduría, es la imaginación.
Que más potente que la historia, es el mito.
Que la esperanza siempre triunfa sobre la experiencia.
Que la única cura para el dolor, es la risa.
Que más poderosos que la realidad, son los sueños.

Robert L. Fulghum

Vive tratando de realizar muchas de las cosas que siempre has soñado y no te quedará tiempo para sentirte mal.

Richard Bach

Coraje no es la ausencia de temor, es considerar que algo es más importante que ese temor.

Ambrose Redmoon

Los grandes momentos de nuestra vida llegan cuando juntamos el coraje de convertir nuestras debilidades en lo mejor de nosotros mismos.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Hay dos cosas importantes en la vida: la primera, conseguir lo que quieres, y después, disfrutarlo.
Sólo los más capaces pueden alcanzar lo segundo.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Prefiero una locura que me entusiasme a una verdad que me agobie.

Christoph M. Wieland

SI hay algo de lo que me siento verdaderamente dueño, no es de mi vida, sino de mis sueños.

Luis Cané

Soñar todo lo que desees soñar. Esa es la belleza de la mente.
Hacer lo que desees hacer. Esa es la fuerza de la voluntad humana.
Probar tus límites con confianza. Ese es el coraje de alanzar la meta.

Bernard Edmonds

La esperanza es el sueño de un hombre despierto.

Diógenes Laertus

Hay personas que viven en un mundo de ensueños, otras que enfrentan la realidad, y hay otras que convierten lo uno en la otra.

Douglas H. Everett

Lo que nos distingue son nuestros sueños y lo que hacemos para que se realicen.

Joseph Epstein

Los problemas del mundo no pueden ser resueltos por los cínicos ni los escépticos, cuyos horizontes están limitados por las realidades evidentes. Necesitamos gente que pueda soñar cosas que nunca existieron.

John Keats

Quien mira hacia afuera, sueña.
Quien mira hacia adentro, despierta.

Carl Jung

Tuvieron la visión, un sueño fugaz, pero al final, un miedo sordo los detuvo.
Nunca comenzaron.
Algo les impidió liberar esa fuerza que todos llevamos en nuestro interior y que sólo puede salir cuando nos ponemos en movimiento y caminamos en línea recta hacia lo que anhelamos, lo que nos ilusiona.

Ray Dickinson

El ayer no es más que la memoria de hoy, y mañana es el sueño de hoy.

Khalil Gibrán

El impulso no puede detenerse: mientras haya vida, habrá sueños.

Miguel Castaño

Hay personas que guardan sus sueños en una caja pequeña y dicen que tienen ilusiones.
Luego guardan las cajas y, cada tanto, las abren para comprobar que siguen allí.
Son grandes planes pero nunca saldrán de sus cajas.
Hace falta mucho coraje para probar si somos tan buenos como nuestros sueños.

Erma Louise Bombeck

Un buen plan les da forma a las decisiones. Es por eso que un buen plan es esencial para convertir en realidad aquellos sueños que se nos escapan.

Lester Robert Bittel

Mucho más importante es el talento, la fuerza o los conocimientos es la capacidad de reírte de ti mismo y poder gozar mientras vas en pos de tus sueños.

Amy Grant

Cada vez que salgo a enfrentar el mundo me consumo el temor de equivocarme y fracasar. Actúo como si estuviera seguro y de a poco me siento seguro. Esta seguridad me ha ayudado a concretar mis ilusiones.

Arsenio Hall

Todo cambio atemoriza, aun aquellos que soñamos con realizar. No hay garantías, sólo la ilusión de alcanzar lo que deseamos. Todo paso es un salto al vacío pero también la posibilidad de realización.

Difícil. Esa es la palabra de la que a veces nos aferramos para no intentar lo posible.

Anónimo

El hierro se oxida por falta de uso, el agua pierde su pureza y se congela cuando hace frío. Del mismo modo, la falta de acción le quita vigor a la mente.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Pobre no es aquella persona cuyos sueños no se han realizado sino aquella persona que no sueña.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Si el sueño fuera como dicen, una tregua, ¿por qué, si te despiertan bruscamente, sientes que te han robado una fortuna?

Jorge Luis Borges

Se puede albergar un sueño durante años y años, y convertido en realidad de repente. Sé paciente. Te pasará, tarde o temprano: la vida te abrirá la puerta, y te permitirá entrar y dar una gran fiesta!

Lois Brown

Si no haces realidad tus sueños, la realidad se los llevará.

Eric Pio

Sin un gran vuelo de la imaginación, perdemos la emoción de las posibilidades.
Soñar, después de todo, es una manera de hacer planes.

Gloria Steinem

Sólo los soñadores pueden enseñarnos a volar.

Anne Marie Pierce

La persona realmente creativa está motivada por sus ganas de alcanzar el objetivo y no por sus deseos de derrotar a los demás.

Ayn Rand

Sueña siempre y apunta hacia más allá del punto que sabes puedes alcanzar.
No te preocupes por tus contemporáneos, ni por tus predecesores.
Intenta ser mejor que tú mismo.

William Faulkner

Sólo las personas que se atreven a ir demasiado lejos logran descubrir hasta dónde pueden llegar.

T. S. Eliot

Hay cosas que uno sueña y a veces prefiere no saber si es posible hacerlas realidad para asegurarse de que sigan existiendo como sueños.

Martín Arreghi

El auténtico soñador es el que sueña imposibles.

Elsa Triolet

Sólo tan alto a donde alcanzo puedo crecer,
sólo tan lejos a donde exploro, puedo llegar,
sólo en la profunidad en la que miro puedo ver,
sólo en la medida en la que sueño puedo ser.

Karen Ravn

Cuando detienes el diálogo interno, todo se hace posible, los proyectos más disparatados se hacen alcanzables.

Carlos Castaneda

EL mayor placer de la vida es hacer lo que la gente te dice que no puedes hacer.

Walter Bagehot

La persona más lenta, que no pierde de vista el objetivo, irá siempre más rápidamente que la que va sin rumbo fijo.

Gotthold W. Lessing

Quien cree que puede obrar guiado exclusivamente por la razón, está condenado a obrar muy raramente.

Gustave Le Bon

El hombre es un dios cuando sueña y un mendigo cuando reflexiona.

Johann F. Hölderlin

La sabiduría suprema es tener sueños de tanta grandeza como para no perderlos de vista mientras se persiguen.

William Faulkner

Perder el tiempo soñando con la persona que quisiéramos ser es dejar pasar a la persona que podemos ser.

Henry David Thoreau

El mundo está en manos de aquellos que tienen el coraje de soñar y de correr el riesgo de vivir sus sueños.

Paulo Coelho

I said I'll Stay, which of course led to a thought that Home is not a Model. And I think, I summed it up well as I sat on A Cold Seat.

Though, I doubt if I'll write such a post, for sometime now.

That is another wonder of having a blog, and for a long time, too. All your thoughts are available to you.

You can have conversations with yourself!

Since January of this year, something extraordnary has been happening in my life. Maybe you've had it happen at some point in your own life, so you won't be surprised, but in my life, it is one of those times of wonder. Some of my more grounded friends will say it's because I'm on Facebook or MySpace and this is to be expected. Others may say that things like this go in cycles, and that my cycle may have just completed, only to begin a new one. Any way you look at it, however, I find this happening just too amazing for words.

I have been meeting and reconnecting with old friends. These are people who dropped out of my life for literally years, and I had not known if I'd ever see them again. It started with Ben. He contacted me through Facebook at the end of last year. This was a little weird at first, mostly because we'd parted ways after attempting to date long distance several years ago. One message led to another, which led to another, and then a text message, or two, or thirty, and by February we were back together as a couple and a writing team. There was no advance warning, no sense of shift in my reality--it just happened. He came back into my life like he'd never left.

Then my friend from high school, Jennifer, also found me on Facebook. More messages flew through the electronic ether. Jennifer is a friend I believe I could not see for a hundred years, and, if we were still alive, we'd sit and talk for hours. She is a wonderful friend. We don't hang out all the time, but I feel like she is closer to me than ever before.

Finally, and most recently, Melissa, who was my best friend when I went through the death of my marriage in the late 90s, found me on Facebook (gee, maybe there is a trend). We went to lunch yesterday, and it was like we'd never stopped being friends. We talked for three hours over lunch, catching up, consoling one another (her marriage died too), and wondering why we lost touch.

The book is a fiction story by Richard Bach, one of the great writers, world has ever produced. The first time I read the book, it started a thought process in me; it made me think beyond my life style, my daily routines. It made me think the purpose of this life. It made me realize that there is so much to live, so much to find, so much to explore. The book added lots of efficacious and dynamic words in my vocabulary. Some of them being:

Experiment, Explore, Experience - The perfect E's
Practice, Perfection - Best P's
"The more you learn, the more you grow, the more you grow, the more is the joy in living, the more is the joy, the perfect your life is".

It really helps us visualize living a perfect and immortal life.

Some of the great punches from the book which inspired me most are given below:

"I don't mind being bone and feathers, mom. I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't, that's all. I just want to know."

"His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundred fourteen miles per hour! It was breakthrough, the greatest single moment in the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for Jonathan Gull."

"Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the flock?"

"Heaven is not a place, and it is not a time, Heaven is being perfect."

The book has still occupied us in thousands of shades of our lives and will keep us occupied eternally.

http://books.google.com/books?id=C19aAAAAMAAJ&q=jonathan+livingston+seagull&dq=jonathan+livingston+seagull&pgis=1

“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.” - Anais Nin

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.” - Richard Bach

“Will the reader turn the page?” - Catherine Drinker Bowen

“Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”
- Sidonie Gabrielle

“Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.” - Jessamyn West

Thanks to Brainy Quotes.

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all - young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks at the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'

The other creatures laughed and said, 'Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you shall die quicker than boredom!'

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, 'See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!'

And the one carried in the current said, 'I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.'

But they cried the more, 'Saviour!' all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.

-- Richard Bach, from "Illusions"

Yup. "Some Fun for Everyone." (Read this article from the Darien News -Review if you need some confirmation yourself.)

Why the word "some?"

Is there some small amount of fun for each person who dallies at Darien Days, but not a lot of fun? Will each person find some single thing they enjoy, but not many things?

Or is "some" used as a superlative, like "That was some game!" or "You got you some mad Texas-Hold 'em skills there, Old Son!"

Or maybe, just maybe, in this era of super-sized-superlatives, somebody in Darien was just exercising some much-needed restraint.

I can't help but be reminded of a favorite line from a favorite book, Richard Bach's Illusions, that goes something like this: "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."

I think it's far more likely that the slogan for Darien Days was created by a committee of some kind.

I can come up with some more reasons if I put my mind to it, but a man's got to know his limitations, and I'm approaching mine.

So can someone please explain to me why somebody felt the need to put something extra into the Darien Days carnival theme line?

To quote Richard Bach's Illusions

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours.

Here's the list minus the top two and my reactions:

• Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Yes, I've read it and loved it, but can't say it changed my life.
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig -- I tried to read it once because of its life-changing properties, but I had to abandon it.
• The Stranger by Albert Camus -- No, I never read it; I got enough French existentialism in my high school AP course, thank you very much.
• 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell -- I have read 1984 and liked it, but not life-changing; Animal Farm is on my to-read list.
• The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins -- I haven't read them and don't really plan to.
• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien -- Read them, loved them, not life-changing.
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card -- One of my all-time favorite books; not life-changing, though.
• Dune by Frank Herbert -- Another all-time favorite, but I couldn't say it was life-changing.
• The Art of War by Sun Tzu -- Haven't read it.
• The Gunslinger [Dark Tower] Series by Stephen King -- Read it, loved it, King is one of my favorite authors, but this series did not change my life.
• Getting Things Done by David Allen -- OK, I can see how this book might change your life if you put its ideas into practice, but it didn't change mine; I was already pretty organized anyway.
• Neuromancer by William Gibson -- Another great book that didn't change my life.
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll -- Childhood classic; didn't change my life.
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein -- Nice read, but I have to say that I'd be a little leery of anyone whose life was changed by this book.
• Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling -- I have adamantly refused to let this series change my life (or even to read them).
• the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe -- Poe is a terrific read, but alas, not life-changing.
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho -- I never even heard of this one.
• Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach -- Ugh! yes, I read it in high school like everyone else.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde -- Another great classic but not life-changing for me.
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie -- I have no intentions of reading this.
• Tao Te Ching -- I would like to read this but probably never will.
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky -- Huh?
• Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond -- Another huh?

Let me just observe that 14 of these entries are speculative fiction of some kind.

Whew, life-changing is a tall order. Even staring at my bookshelves and seeing all the books that I have loved over the years, I am hard-pressed to come up with a title that literally changed my life -- where my life would be radically different if I hadn't read that book.

I guess I will have to confine my list to those books that most strongly influenced me. And they would be:

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee -- because this is the most perfect novel ever written
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller -- for teaching me about the absurdity of war and life
• The Stand by Stephen King -- for its mythology and the characters who have become old friends
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott -- the best book about writing I have ever read

Have any books changed your life? If you blog about this, please let me know in the comments.

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• The Books That Changed Your Lives ["What]

El mundo es tu cuaderno de ejercicios, en cuyas páginas realizas tus sumas.

No es la realidad, aunque puedes expresar la realidad en él si lo deseas.

También eres libre de escribir tonterías o embustes, o de arrancar las páginas.

 §

Justifica tus limitaciones, y ciertamente las tendrás.

§

No te dejes abatir por las despedidas.

Son indispensables como preparación para el reencuentro.

Y es seguro que los amigos se reencontrarán, después de algunos momentos o de todo un ciclo vital. 

§

Si haces la experiencia de ser ficticio durante un tiempo, comprenderás que a veces los personajes de ficción son más auténticos que los individuos de carne y hueso y de corazón palpitante.

§

Para vivir libre y dichosamente, debes sacrificar el tedio.

No es siempre un sacrificio fácil.

Autor: Bach, Richard. Ilusiones, Javier Vergara Editor, Buenos Aires, 140 pp, 1986.

Recopilación: Club MaNena, 2008 para Website: www.clubmanena.cl

Richard Bach's story Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a very insightful work about innovators and innovation.  I'm not going to give a lengthy review of it except that I recommend reading it.  Leave the breakfast flock and learn how to truly fly.

Going through such a phase myself, of late, I have been wondering about the concept of soul mate. Not about my soulmate in particular, (though it could be), but about soulmates in general.

1) What if there can be more than one soulmates for a person? If we were to assume that soul is multidimensional, then cannot a soul have a mate for one dimension, and another mate for other dimension?

2) What if a person can be one's own soulmate? In its current form, a soul mate is understood as external to oneself. So, the search for wholeness is externally-oriented, seeking to fill in one's incompleteness from outside. But what if the internal holds the potential for wholeness?

What set me off thinking was Richard Bach's book 'A Bridge Across Forever', in which he writes at one place:

"If the perfect mate, I thought, is one who meets all the needs all the time, and if one of our needs is for variety itself, then no one person anywhere can be the perfect mate!

The only true soulmate is to be found in many different people."

And how does the idea of evolution of a soul fit in with the idea of a soulmate? Do soulmates evolve together? Because evolving entails a change in wordviews, values, abilities, knowledge, etc, then how does one soul's evolution affect its soul mate's evolution?

How does one know when he or she has found one's soul mate?

Wow, I hadn’t thought of myself that way. I do realise that my having changed several jobs and careers made me somewhat of a gypsy. But I didn’t realise I was that different, certainly not freakish enough to warrant a term!

I felt strangely proud. I stood out in a crowd of clones, each doing the same thing every day. And I got thinking about what it was that made me different. How I could change jobs with such impunity with no thought to consequence. And I arrived at the following conclusions:

1.       I am not afraid to fail. I have the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

2.       I am not seduced by trappings of success. By working faithfully eight hours a day in a job, you may get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

Some might argue, there is another term for such a person – loser! But I don’t care. I have a book coming out, and a contract for two more. How many can say that? Plus I have such a plethora of stories from my various jobs that it’ll keep me in writing business for a long, long time.

Richard Bach illustrates this beautifully in Illusions – “Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil....Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom for clinging was their way of life and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, i trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom...and taking a breath, did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.”

And he said, “The River delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go.”

Anyway, I wrote the said piece. It should be published on Sunday. I’ll post a link.

---3---

I read this book in 20 minutes!  Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the famous story of the seagull who wanted to fly faster and better than all the others.  He felt there had to be more to life than continuously searching for food.  So he began to train himself, and learned how to control his wings and feathers.  But because he has disobeyed The Flock, he becomes an Outcast, and must leave. 

However, Jonathan finds his higher purpose and so reaches transcendence.  Later, he decides to return to teach others in the his Flock who also feel that there is more to life than the search for food.  This book had a good, if simple, message.  Follow your dreams and you will reach a higher being.  A quick read, but very basic. 

3/5 

"Puoi arrivare da quasiasi parte, nello spazio e nel tempo, dovunque tu desideri disse l’Anziano.” “Io mi sono recato in ogni luogo possibile e immaginabile, in ogni dove e in ogni quando.” Lanciò uno sguardo al mare, all’orizzonte. “E’ buffo. Quei gabbiani che non hanno una meta ideale e che viaggiano solo per viaggiare, non arrivano da nessuna parte, e vanno piano. Quelli invece che aspirano alla perfezione, anche senza intraprendere alcun viaggio, arrivano dovunque, e in un baleno. Ricordati, Jonathan, il paradiso non si trova nè nello spazio nè nel tempo, poichè lo spazio e il tempo sono privi di senso e di valore.”

...semplicemente fantastico.

Non dar retta ai tuoi occhi, e non credere a quello che vedi.
Gli occhi vedono solo ciò’ che è limitato.
Guarda col tuo intelletto, e scopri quello che conoci già’,
allora imparerai come si vola.