Month: February 2004

Below you will find some clear proof that everything is connected to everything else in one way or another.

Feel free to test this hypothesis by clicking on the individual shapes and dragging them around the area (which represents the whole universe). You and only you are capable of producing the most unbelievably beautiful and intricate shapes within this web we call human experience.

Try it out and see for yourself. See, I told you so...

Hard to believe that when I went there, way back in 1976-1979, that the tuition was "only" around $10,000.

I hope you realize that I am VERY thankful that my parents were willing to invest such a large sum of money for my education (which in the end helped mold me into the person I am today -- hopefully making the investment worthwhile).

Keep your cool and do not give up, whatever happens.

So rather than doing things like you have been always doing them up to now why not consider changing them even if it is ever so slight. Once started on this new way of things you pretty much get the hang of it and wonder why you had not begun long before. Ironic, isn't it?

When I woke early that morning and abruptly sat up straight in bed, I noticed right away what had happened during my sleep. It was all over the place. On the walls and ceiling, puddles of it on the floor, and splatter marks on the windows. How could something like that have ever happened without me waking up? I should have noticed but I didn't. Instead I was sleeping away in a land of nothingness without a single worry in the world. I could barely step across the room to the door without slipping and sliding across that redness, causing streaks and sliding noises. It smelled acrid, rotten and like a distant rose, all at the same time and after one another. Next time I would pay more attention (I hoped) and be sure that even while I slept I would remain alert at the slightest hint of something happening. Didn't want to waste my life away in a land of slumbering nothingness, now did I?

Basic Principles:

• No pain, no change
• Three levels of buyer need
• Diagnose before you prescribe
• Pain flows throughout an entire organization
• "Solution" = Buying Vision
• People make emotional decisions for logical reasons
• People buy from people
• Power buys from power
• Make yourself equal before you make yourself different
• Don't close before it is closeable
• You can't sell to someone who can't buy

Michael T. Bosworth
Solution Selling,
Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets
(Introduction)

In that case, then the best thing for you to do for now is probably just to think back on some specific moment in the past and experience it all over again. As if it were yesterday or even better yet a minute I mean a split-second ago. That way the feeling will become fresh and clear in your mind so that you can relive that emotion with as much or even more pleasure than the original moment. A second, more powerful passing, that acquaintance over there in the wind. That is what I recommend, and I feel fairly confident that that has a higher chance of working than say what you have attempted up until now. Of course, that moment in the past has to be chosen very carefully. Very very carefully, not just any thing or any time. It should be distant enough from the current situation and yet still form a subtle if not mysterious connection with that current moment that you are trying to re-make, re-enumerate and then finally re-invigorate. Think carefully, be honest with yourself, and in the end things will work out for the better, I am sure.

So that is what it is like to acquire eternal life. To be honest with you, I had originally expected it to be something completely different. Who could have ever imagined the simplicity of the situation? Not me, not that guy over there, nor anyone else with whom I had become acquainted during the last few years. The change was significant though from the outside the metamorphosis was barely discernible. Now it is time to find something else to attain, something completely different.

If I had those golden dreams
Of my yesterdays
I would wrap you in the heaven
'till I'm dyin' on the way.

Bad Company
Straight Shooter
Feel like makin' love

When you sit in the train and gaze at the distant horizon through all the trees that are flashing by, it is not perfectly clear whether or not those birds over there are actually floating on the water or hovering just above the surface. You see, the movement of the train combined with the perfect stillness of the horizontal line produces an illusion of depth. It is perfectly clear that the distant flatness is there and that the ground next to the window is there as well, however anything inbetween conveys less of such a distinction between this and that. The reflection of the blue sky on the water and the apparent shadows of the birds together make an unusual reorientation of things not that unusual at all. That is why it took my eyes a second or two longer to refocus and try to make sense of this interesting and misleading natural phenomenon.

Depending on your mood, please pick one of the following:

Could this be the same person? Yes it could. In fact, it's me.

A lot of one's time seems to be spent on (trying) to put things back and/or rearranging items so that they return to the places where they so-called belong. This goes way beyond just cleaning up the mess that the kids leave behind, or vacuuming the house every week, sweeping the leaves away in the front of the house, or even prioritizing your jumbled thoughts each morning when you wake up. What it means is this (just an idea). The way that objects need to be arranged and oriented and re-arranged all over again in your space of existence has nothing to do with a pre-ordained way that things are "really" supposed be. The process of doing this, the experience of taking part in this continuous cleanup, the never-ending actions and reactions, that is what is the most important. At least, that is what makes the most sense to me. Otherwise, what is it all for in the end?

A split second after the thorn-shaped metal object embedded itself into his side, a larger mass of twisted something took off his left leg just below his knee-cap.

Before he had time to realize what was happening, a slab of jagged concrete smashed into his forehead and killed him instantly.

So that was what it was like to get killed in a bomb blast. Too bad he wasn't paying enough attention to the suspicious-looking vehicle which had parked right in front of him, loaded with five hundred pounds of explosives.

Reading newspaper articles about such tragic events, he had always wondered what it would be like to die such a violent death. Just before he took his next sip of early morning coffee.

Now he knew.

Alright so he hates it that he is getting older. They have been telling him this from the moment he was born, and they repeat it each and every day in which he awakes and finds himself. Older and older and on and on with little or no hope of this inevitable process relenting in any way possible. He thinks, again. Imagine that the real truth is already "that while he might be assuming he is aging, the complete opposite is what it is all about." There is this small wrinkle in time which everyone (including he) has forgotten about, passed right over like a bird in flight. A lofty escape from fright. An oversight. All of which puts him in an awkward position when the time of truth finally arrives. And then what is he expected to say, admit, describe? As if he ever could make any sense out of it at all.

Some people walk all around the place like this while others choose to take a slightly different route. Whatever the direction or whoever it may be it is often pretty much the very same way and methods and songs they sing. Next please.

At the side of the road he could clearly see the tall grass swaying in the wind, producing these oscillating and masterful waves. It was a wonderful site in which to engage one's thoughts, especially since he knew very well that he was the cause of all this. For a quick second he looked the other way and the swaying motion stopped, only to continue just as before when he re-engaged his thoughts and sights in the original direction. Funny how all those passers-by had absolutely no idea of what was really happening. Yes, he could control it all, well almost all of it, and he was getting better and better. After having practiced now for so many years, the effort of concentration required was much less. Sometimes it just arose without his control, and he wondered then if it was he or some higher power. No he was the soul cause, he was sure, and he would prove it some day. He kind of knew how he would do this convincing show, but first he would have to plan it all out better in his head. That is where it all resided anyway, in his head. Alright, just a little extra gust of wind here, some higher oscillations of grass waving over there and then a complete stop. All of the people kept going on with their lives unrelenting and unappreciative of this artistic work of his. In one way it made him angry, but then again since his emotions were merely thoughts of his thoughts of what was happening and being caused all around him, it really did not matter any more.

At the bottom of the jar the tiny bit that is left has been pulverized into a very fine powder. This slides smoothly into the cup and then the boiling water comes down to dissolve it all into a darkened brownish mix. The fork is dipped into this liquid torrent and rotated round and round. As the cup is carried upstairs to its final destination, the spinning substance continues on its predestined course as if nothing is were or will be happening. A swirling and chaotic mass of planets and solar systems and other objects of infinite sizes, shrunken down to microspecs just dissolving away as if nothing were really happening. Even when the cup is tilted or reoriented in space changing altitude and angle of time, the invisible cyclone remains undisturbed. In the end, the sipping and gulping and taking of deeper breaths is what really matters.

Could it be that things are picking up without me realizing it? That's to say, two more job interviews under my belt and two more to go. Who knows what else the future has in store.

"So you are familiar with the term 'passend werk' ('appropriate work') aren't you?" She asked me this as if she expected me not to know.

"Sure," I answered. "It means that they will help me find work that matches my skills and background." What else could it mean?

Wrong.

"No, I am sorry," she answered. "It means any work that you can possibly do." Then she added, as if she felt good hurting people with such words, "and you have no choice but to accept this kind of work." I could tell that she hated her job.

Funny, before my meeting with this so-called reintegration officer, I had been entertaining a false illusion that this person was going to help me find an appropriate job. I would be saved at last by this angel from above...

She saw by the expression on my face that I was a little confused. "That is why we make you sign a contract, otherwise we can not and will not help you at all."

That's the law, so la-di-da...

"Alright," I answered, "so that means that for example if there is a position available at some snack bar making French Fries, then I have to take it."

"Yes that is correct." I was beginning to understand and fathom the horrors of this macabre situation I had gotten myself into by being an unemployed bum for so long.

She gained even more pleasure when I explained that I had two university degrees, had struggled hard my whole life working my way up the company ladders, had assumed responsible positions here and there, etc.

"That is the law that the government here has decreed and you must accept it." You dumb and thankless foreigner you...

I thought about it a second and tried not to look back at her staring and wrinkled visage. And then I said aloud what I had been thinking, "alright, that would be fine."

Nothing like yet another interesting dimension to life through which I will gain even more knowledge as I pursue the moment of truth for which we have all been waiting. What a drag.

I saw it clearly before me...

Starting off all over again as junior assistant snack bar trainee, and in no time I would become the best French Fry maker in the whole wide world. Fantastic, I cannot wait.