Why Don't You Change?

(Krishnamurti) Why don´t you change? What prevents you? But ask the question more seriously and deeply. What´s your answer? Why don´t you change? What prevents you? (Robin Williams/'Good Will Hunting') You can do anything you want. You are bound by nothing. What are you passionate about? ('Waking Life') We go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another continuously on end, auto pilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action [is] basically for survival. All communication, simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. Here's your change. Paper or plastic? Credit or debit? [Do you] want ketchup with that? I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be an ant, you know? (George Carlin) I did my career on my own terms and I don't know how many people get to do that anymore. I think that there are too many expectations, too many pathways and rules and the true rebels don't seem to be around very much. What would you say to a 20 year-old then? I would say do what you love. Do it well and if people pat you on the back for it, you got it. The secret to happiness is finding something you love and doing it well and then being recognized for it. Someone, even if it's one person, who says you're doing a great job or if it's applause. But those three things together... I said to my wife at that time when I changed, I said "You know, even if I only filled coffeehouses three days a week for the rest of my life I'd be happy doing that." And when you let go of goals and stuff, I mean the attachment to goals that's when things come to you. You should have a name point, but not a THING like that. Everybody is running around trying to save the planet but the planet doesn't need that. The planet will take care of itself. People are selfish, and that's what they're doing is trying to save the planet for themselves to have a nicer place to live. They don't care about the planet. People think nature is outside of them. They don't take in to them the idea that we are part of it. They say "Oh, we're going for a nature walk. We're going to the country because we like nature." Nature is in here and if you're in tune with it like the Indians or the Hopi's, especially the balance of life, the balance, the harmony of nature if you understand that, you don't overbuild. It's a symphony. Everybody is in the band, you know. It's not just one group. People want their goodies. People want their toys. Everybody wants the newest gizmo. We're slaves to gizmos and toys. Everybody wants a cell phone that will make pancakes and they think that will make them happy. (Randy Pausch) Find your passion and follow it and if there is anything I have learned in my life you will not find that passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money because the more things and the more money you have the more you will just look around and use that as the metric and there will always be someone with more. That passion will be grounded in people and it will be grounded in the relationships you have with people and what they think of you when your time comes. (Jeremy Rifkin) We are actually soft-wired to experience another's plight as if we are experiencing it ourselves but mirror neurons are just the beginning of a whole range of research going on in neuropsychology, in brain research and in child development that suggests that we are actually soft-wired not for aggression and violence and self-interest and utilitarianism that we are actually soft-wired for sociability attachment, as John Bowlby might have said, affection, companionship and that the first drive is the drive to actually belong. (Krishnamurti) What we are trying in all these discussions and talks here is to see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. Not accept things as they are but to understand it, to go into it, to examine it. Give your heart and your mind with everything that you have to find out a way of living differently but that depends on you and not somebody else because in this there is no teacher, no pupil. There is no leader. There is no guru. There is no master, no savior. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil. You are the master. You are the guru. You are the leader. You are EVERYTHING and to understand is to transform what is. (Wayne Dyer) They are afraid of new ideas. They're loaded with prejudices not based upon anything in reality but based on if something is new, I reject it immediately because it's frightening to me. What they do instead is just stay with the familiar. You know, to me the most beautiful things in all the universe are the most mysterious.