5 stages in the emotional cycle of change:

It’s going to be great.

Wow! It’s not so great.

This is harder than it looks.

We can do this.

Yeah! We did it.

Kelley and Conner

https://bit.ly/3cPteyR

Raven 

Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything. ~ Aesop

“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

— John Keats

5 rules of success:

1. “Whenever you are offended, understand that you are complicit in taking offense.”

2. Think progress, not perfection

3. “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”

4. Relax, you’re probably taking it too seriously

5. Focus on what you can control

Discipline is remembering what you want.

 

Discipline is remembering what you want.

"A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others." 

| Confucius

"There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others."

 Niccolò Machiavelli

The Prince

"If we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."

La Rochefoucauld

Maximes

I believe with Jung that each of us is “modern man in search of a soul.” — James Hillman

"Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure."

Virginia Woolf

The Death of the Moth

"Man is only what he becomes — profound truth, but he becomes only what he is — truth still more profound."

Amiel

"All art intuitively apprehends coming changes in the collective unconsciousness."

Carl Jung

Civilization in transition“Seen from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character. It is therefore hated by tyrants, who rightly fear the competition of a coercive force they cannot monopolize..."

— Hannah Arendt

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

"With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh."

J. W. von Goethe

“At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously…that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”  Keats

“The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.”

— John Keats

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous. ~ Bill Moyers



Have more than you show, Speak less than you know. - Shakespeare

 

Keep your knives sharp and your wits sharper.

iptilian and much more.

Because of these achievements, Les was inducted into the BLADE Cutlery Hall of Fame in 2017. What follows is a portion of BLADE‘s write up from the event. Jon accepted the award on Les’s behalf.

Jon explained that his father visited his first custom gun and knife show in Glendale, California, in 1979 and met the craftsmen and marveled at the works they had made and offered for sale.

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“I liked that they were independent and developed their skills by improving their products over time,” Jon related his father’s sentiments. “I also appreciated that they were independent and plied their skills in their home workshops.”

At the beginning of his career Les indicated he met pioneer knifemakers like Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Bob Loveless, Barry Wood, Glen Hornby, Chuck Stapel and many more, talking knives and guns for hours at a time. Les visited their shops and learned how they worked, what their definition of quality was in regard to design, materials, fit and finish, walk and talk, and metallurgy.

“I have been constantly intrigued by all the personalities, processes, materials, artistry and innovation that are present in the custom knife world, and challenged in how to translate them into a unique, high-quality manufacturing environment able to serve an ever-growing customer base,” Jon shared his father’s words. “I confess, it wasn’t easy creating a world-class company, but the journey, one knife at a time, was worth the effort!”

Charlton Heston

 

There are no "good guns". There are no "bad guns." Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody — except bad people.

~Charlton Heston

 

Meditation is a fulcrum for tranquility.

"The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription." Norman Cousins

Self-trust is not an endowment, but is the Second Birth of the mind, which cannot come without years of deep reading.

It is not enough to do your best. You must succeed at doing what is necessary. - Winston Churchill

Don’t write it right, just write it—and then make it right later.

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do. ~ Lin Yutang

One of the happiest moments in life is when you find the #courage to let go of what you cannot change. 

Word of the day is ‘nidificate’: to build a warm, cosy nest and settle there for the foreseeable.

  Make a List: 

What you can control:

What is outside your control:

- American Politics

 

What others think of you is generally none of your business.  

Making the beginning is one third of the work.   - Irish Proverb

Constructive Criticism

 

Fail Forward

 

Greet responsible failure with kind inquiry. 

What did you learn?

What factors contributed to this failure?

What didn’t happen that should have?

What will you do differently next time?

What new skill would you like to develop?

The Role of Spiritual Practice in the Modern World

 ABSTRACT: 

For the past 50 years, people have begun to recognize that advanced technology and material abundance do not provide meaning in their lives. This talk discusses how spiritual practice provides the balance needed to live a life of understanding and harmony.
Before retiring from the corporate, high-tech world in 1990, Les Kaye worked at IBM for over 30 years, as an engineer, salesman, manager, and software developer. In the mid-sixties, while working and raising a family, he started to practice Zen Buddhism. He was ordained as a Zen monk in 1970 and was recognized as a Zen teacher in 1986. Today he is the abbot of the Kannon Do Zen Center in Mountain View....

  

https://youtu.be/dPhbUavjSKc

Calm Abiding

 

“If you could only keep quiet, clear of memories and expectations, you would be able to discern the beautiful pattern of events. It’s your restlessness that causes chaos.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

Lottery Buyers Characterized

 

 

Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math. - Ambrose Bierce 

You are the master of your fate and you create your own happiness

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."

- Albert Einstein

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."


- Albert Einstein

You are the master of your fate and you create your own happiness.

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?  And if I am only for myself, then what am I?  And if not now, when?

- Hillel the Elder, 1st Century B.C.

 

 It's never the events that happen to us that make us disturbed, but our view of them.

Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.

Happiness and misery depend as much on temperament as on fortune.

- Francois de la Rochefoucauld, 17th Century

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

- Abe Lincoln

Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.

- Leo Tolstoy

 To be in Hell is to drift; to be in Heaven is to steer.

- Geo. B. Shaw

.................

It is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily;

You yourself do not know what you want.  Rather than admit this,    

you pretend that someone is keeping you from excercising your liberty.

Who is this?  It is yourself.

- Thomas Merton, 1961

.................................

I am resposible for the achievement of my desires.

I am responsible for my choices and acktions...

I am responsible for my personal happiness.

- Dr. Nathaniel Branden

 .....................................

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

- Thomas Jefferson

..................................

If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.

- Ram Dass

 ...............................

Happiness is something you can work at.  It's a matter of identifying the things you do that get in the way of happiness,  and figuring out what positive activities you can do everyday to augment it.

- David Lykken, U of Minnesota

 .....................................

Depressed people are caught in a  feedback loop in which distorted thoughts cause negative feelings, which then distort feelings further.

You can break the cycle by changing the thoughts.

A big part of cognitive therapy is training clients to catch the thoughts and  distortions and then find alternative and more accurate ways of thinking.

Over many weeks,the client's thoughts become more realistic.  The feedback loop is broken and the client's anxiety or depression abates.

- Johnathan Haidt, Psychologist and Happiness Researcher

.............................................

 "One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things." Henry Miller

"One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things." Henry Miller

Look at this day, for it is life, the very life of life.

 

SANSKRIT PROVERB

Look at this day, for it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all the realities and verities of existence, the bliss of growth, the splendor of action, the glory of power.

For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision, but today, well lived, makes every day a dream, a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day