Tony Robbins

I watched this 22 minute video all the way through. It captivated me so much I immediately watched all the way through a second time. Enjoy:

Einstein on Everything Except Science

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

--Albert Einstein

Wisdom of Alan Watts

Stonehenge and an Unorthodox Jew

First: a prayer Barack Obama left in the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The prayers are private, and no one is ever supposed to remove one, however one unorthodox orthodox jew did just that. He stole Obama's private prayer and leaked it to the press. Here it is:

"Lord, protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will."

Here's an amazing video of a man who is rebuilding Stonehenge by himself.

The Tao of Joker

Recently a creative writing professor gave me the following advice:

"The best villains are those who evoke sympathy. They have some apparent character flaws which allow you insight into their existence, but underlying it all is a certain sensitivity, an understanding of goodness that allows you to relate to them, to realize that they are a human being. Only then do they reveal their shriveled soul by using that very same redeeming quality as twisted motivation for further their evil deeds."

Enter the Joker.

This is a man who possesses a simplicity, an understanding of life that borderlines on spiritual. He's content with a cheap suit, and burns money for kicks. Unlike most villains his motivation is not for personal gain; the advancement of his wallet, scope of his influence, or notches in his bedpost. He has relinquished these fruits of life. His sole purpose seems noble: achievement of his dreams. It is only when we realize what his dream is that he becomes so sinister. Unadulterated chaos in Gotham.

The Bhagavad-Gita, and ancient spiritual instruction manual, defines three types of individual:

An agent called pure
has no attachment or individualism,
is resolute and energetic,
unchanged in failure and success.

An agent said to be passionate
is anxious to gain the fruit of action,
greedy, essentially violent, impure,
subject to excitement and grief.

An agent defined by dark inertia
is undisciplined, vulgar, stubborn,
fraudulent, dishonest, lazy,
depressed, and slow to act.

Most villains fall into the latter categories. They attempt to beat the world into submission, using violence, dishonesty, and Machiavellian tactics, destroying its intrinsic value for a petty gain. Along comes a hero, a pure agent, who values not the riches, and sensations of the world, but something more permanent. Hero beats villain.

The Joker is no ordinary villain.

Everything he does screams that he is an agent of purity. He has no attachment, little individualism, is resolute and energetic, and unchanged in failure and success. Furthermore, he possesses a level of surrender, and vulnerability that one might not expect in a villain. His agenda: to free the world of its laws, doctrines, dogmas, plans, legalities, power structures, and rigidity. To return it to a state of possibility and limitlessness. The problem is instead of influencing people to sacrifice their power out of love, he doesn't want to allow them a choice.

"Do I really look like a man with a plan, Harvey? I don't have a plan. The mob has plans, the cops have plans... I just *do* things. I'm a wrench in the gears. I *hate* plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's. Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I am not a schemer. I show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are... It's a schemer who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where it got you. I just did what I do best-I took your plan and turned it on itself. Look what I have done to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple bullets. Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plans are horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will get blown up, nobody panics. But when I say one little old mayor will die, everyone loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It's fair."

Watching the Dark Knight was a joy. I never would have guessed that as a child, the super hero whose pajamas I refused to take off would develop into the modern day legend that he is. The Dark Knight is just that: a great American Legend. Like the tales of Greek gods, I think this story has so many insights, and illustrates so many facets of the human condition, that it will continue to be retold hundreds of years into the future. The genius behind the Joker is simply one small aspect of the movie.

I'll leave you with one final look at the Joker:

"You look nervous. Is it the scars? You want to know how I got them? Come here. Hey, look at me. So I had a wife, beautiful; like you. Who tells me, I worry too much. Who tells me, I ought to smile more. Who gambles, and gets in deep with sharks. One day they carve her face. We have no money for surgeries. She can't take it! I just want to see her smile again. I just want her to know that I don't care about the scars. So I stick a razor in my mouth and do this... to myself. And you know what? She can't stand the sight of me! She leaves. Now I see the funny side. Now I'm always smiling!"

A Short Story and 7 Mutants

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!



- 101 Zen Stories



7 People From Around the World With Real Mutant Superpowers

Inspiring Outlaws

Every now and again I hear of someone who is not limited by social norms. They take liberties with the law, not out of greed, but out of inspired action. These men break down social barriers to inspire the world and deliver a message that they believe in, usually in an extraordinary way. Here is such an example:

Alain Robert: Urban Free Climber and Skyscraper Mountaineer

"The man later confirmed, moments after being arrested on the roof of the tower, that he was Alain Robert, a 46-year-old stuntman famous for scaling structures like the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, the Sydney Opera House in Australia and the Eiffel Tower and Montparnasse Tower in Paris. He wore a T-shirt with his name and the address of a Web site (thesolutionissimple.org), exercise pants and climbing shoes. He had long blond hair. He used no rope, harness or parachute."
--The NY Times



What an awesome way to inspire change in the world.