I love the philosophy of the
Tao Te Ching


"No growt without assistance
no action without reaction
no desire without restraint
give yourself up and find yourself again

Tangible things have no permanence
there is nothing we can hold onto in this world
let go and possess what is real"

"If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up."

"When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever."


"Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner."

"Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control"

"Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations."


"Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place."

"Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, un-nameable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom."


Read more from the Tao Te Ching

Merry Xmas

Give a goat to a family in need

In our western society we have a huge pressure and focus on mass-consumerism.
Now in Xmas times, instead of giving to those who have everything, maybe we can give to those who have less, to somebody that actually need it...
World vision; give a present that counts
Gaver som forandrer verden
The 10 Principles of Greener Gift-Giving

The strenght of weakness

"Now I want you to listen to me closely. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. Do you understand? Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we choose to act on. That's who we really are."
- Sirius in Harry Potter

- I have felt one thing to be very true; the grandest of strengths is daring to accept personal weakness, in front of an other...but especially and maybe before the latter is even possible - to yourself...Give up the fight and see your humanity in the eyes, shatter the perfect image you strive for, dare to show hurt, vulnerability, all those feelings we in general try to hide so well, but still all carry somewhere inside.
But I guess this is something that needs to come from within...I just had it come to me strongly one day. I had of course heard people say it many times before, thought it sounded good and true, but it is a huge difference in understanding something with your head, and getting a understanding deep inside...like an answer that arises from the core of yourself.
Can life ever be about winning? Gaining power? Be the best one? Be the prettiest one? The smartest? The most desired? Well, of course yes, it will make you feel great, cause in that moment you feel it is overwhelmingly wonderful and strong. It is a feeling of pleasure and winning. But then it fades and you always need more. For some reason these things never last long, these outer "winnings" fade quickly, and one needs refill. It is an eternal chase because the feeling is there merely in the minute you achieve it. So you need it again. And in that way it never stops. You get into a circle of wanting more, which is like an endless spiral moving upwards and that makes you thirst more for every conquest. So, in a way you win, but in an other you loose, again and again and again and get more caught into the net the more you play it. Until one day, I imagine, you get to a place where this is the only things that matters to you, and that is what you live for...a true nightmare. You have forgotten the core of life.

I think you can win, but in the long run and in a totally different way...rather opposite actually. And this is the strongest battle your soul might ever win too. You can except defeat. You can give the battle over. You can unclench the fist that holds around power, success, beauty and all that, and give in to what we really are...human beings with weaknesses and strengths. We are not either or....we are.
I don´t mean to sounds like a preacher now, but maybe I do. I just had this come to me so strongly today and I just needed to express it in words. And maybe, give somebody else a spark of inspiration on the road they are walking too...who knows?

Merry Xmas everybody
Warm hugs
~ Åsa

Kan speilet tale

av Sigbjørn Obstfelder

"Kan speilet tale?

Speilet kan tale!

Speilet skal se på dig hver morgen,
forskende,
se på dig med det dybe, kloge øie,
- dit eget!
hilse dig med det varme, det mørkeblå øie:
Er du ren?
Er du tro?"

Some videos

I just wan´t to sear some videos / sings I really like.
Hope you´ll enjoy :-)
..............

This is kick-ass beautiful. I cry every time I watch it.
Claire de lune (Debussy)


.................
What A Wonderful World
One of the most over-used yet most wonderful songs EVER!
That´s a man with vitality and voice, dude!!! RESPECT!
Enjoy and always remember - IT IS a wonderful world! ;-)
Louis Armstrong – What A Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you.

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.
What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

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

An other classic that NEVER dies! And what a text!
(except I could do without the last line, too codependent, haah!)
Edith Piaf – Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

Je ne regrette rien 
(I regret nothing)
Non ! Rien de rien
Non ! Je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal, tout ?a m'est bien Úgal !
Non ! Rien de rien...
Non ! Je ne regrette rien
J'ai payÚ, balayÚ, oubliÚ
Je me fous du passÚ !

Avec mes souvenirs
J'ai allumÚ le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux !
BalayÚs mes amours
Et tous leurs trÚmolos
BalayÚs pour toujours
Je repars Ó zÚro...

Non ! Rien de rien...
Non ! Je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal, tout ?a m'est bien Úgal !
Non ! Rien de rien...
Non ! Je ne regrette rien...
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd'hui, ?a commence avec toi !


I regret nothing
No, nothing at all, I regret nothing at all
Not the good, nor the bad. It is all the same.
No, nothing at all, I have no regrets about anything.
It is paid, wiped away, forgotten.
I am not concerned with the past, with my memories.
I set fire to my pains and pleasures,
I don´t need them anymore.
I have wiped away my loves, and my troubles.
Swept them all away.
I am starting again from zero.

No, nothing at all, I have no regrets
Because from today, my life, my happiness, everything,
Starts with you!
........
Then, an other classic. It is impossible to not move when listening to this song

Easy, yet thoughtprovoking(?) riddle

A father and his son is driving around in a horrible storm, the father looses control of the car and they crash into a tree. The father dies immediately.
The son is taken by ambulance to the nearest hospital. But when he arrives in the surgery-room the doctor calls out, "Oh, no, it is my son"
How is this possible?

Something to think about: Global dimming / global warming

Global dimming is a term describing the gradual reduction in the amount of sunlight observed reaching the Earth's surface since the 1950s.
The effect varies by location but globally is of the order of a 5% reduction over the three decades 1960-1990; the trend has reversed during the past decade. Global dimming creates a cooling effect that may have led scientists to underestimate the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming dimming may have caused large scale changes in weather patterns.
Climate models speculatively suggest that this reduction in sunshine at the surface may have led to the failure of the monsoon in sub-Sharon Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, together with the associated famines, caused by Northern hemisphere pollution cooling the Atlantic.
This is not universally accepted and is very difficult to prove.Some scientists now consider that the effects of global dimming have masked the effect of global warming, and that resolving global dimming may therefore have a major and previously unpredicted impact on temperatures and sea levels.
Initial work to incorporate the effects of global dimming suggest that world temperatures may rise by 2 °C by 2030, and as much as 10 °C by 2100; this is a doubling of the widely accepted figure of a 5 °C rise in global temperature this Century.
If this were to be so, such large increases would lead to the melting of the Greenland icecap, major reductions in the extent of tropicreinforcingsts, and significant rises in sea levels.
A further speculation is that such a rise in temperature would trigger a rapid and irreversible release of the huge deposits of methane hydrates currently locked beneath the ocean floor, releasing methane gas, one of the most powerful of the greenhouse gases.
A similar mechanism is one of the theories proposed to explain the Permian-Triassic extinction event approximately 252 million years ago, and the extinctions associated with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum around 55 million years ago.
It is estimated that it took the planet as long as 100,000 years to recover to a "normal state" following the Thermal Maximum.