So E.Y.D has changed with the fall season to a new look and feel for the moment. 

 You will find enlightened quotes, meditations, and philosophies from the great teachers of past and present. Along with Pop culture Zen from StumbleUpon, You tube, and other Social Media sites.

I hope you will enjoy my photo blog series:

Heart warming Winter quotes and photos

Enchanting Autumn incantations of sublime seasonal change

In the Lumbini grove, under the shade of a flowering Sal tree, The Buddha, founder of the philosophy of Buddhism was born. He was known as Siddhattha. (Siddhartha = one whose purpose has been achieved). This is my continuing series of Buddhist quotes from the Dhammapada.

The Dhammapada – the essential teachings of the Buddha

The Wisdom of the Buddha

Buddhist verses from Siddhartha – The enlightened one

“The reason why we are here, I call “The Personal Legend”. All my characters, somehow they have a reason to be here, and they have to struggle to find their place under the sun. Which they do…
…and of course they have to pay a high price.”  Paulo Coelho

Top Ten Paulo Coelho Videos on Youtube

My mantra is: To Strive for Love, To seek knowledge, To Find happiness, and Yield not to fear.  Inspired by my favorite poem Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson.  “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

A philosophy in 25 words of less: inspired by Pete Carroll’s Win forever

Inspiring FNL Speech

A Zen Art Blog

I hope to share with my readers some of the everyday artistic beauty I find in the world.    Here are some of my most popular posts from my new blog:  http://enlightenyourday.com/

  Check them out and leave me a comment with your feedback and thoughts.  Thanks  

Create your own Personal Creed today.

“Just open the flood gates of your mind and let your inner thoughts and emotions flow. My creed felt wonderful to express and I enjoyed the experience tremendously. I titled my creed: I will. It embodies the direction I set forth for my heart and soul. “

Quotes from the book: Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran

“In hopes of lifting my spirits, I perused the used book stores looking for inspiration, something to bring new hope; maybe even an omen. Looking to brighten my own sad day. Only one author comes to mind, Kahlil Gibran, who writes pure stark beauty for the soul.”

Stillness Speaks: Meditative thoughts by Eckhart Tolle

“I love Meditative thought books. A book without a story, beginning, or ending. Just food for thought that contains bite size bits of knowledge allowing the reader to think gently or deeply about something. The focus is not within the pages, but within your thoughts, feelings, and aspirations. “

Dr. Wayne Dyer’s practical guide to meditation and his nine spiritual principles.

“So on a recent trip to the book store, I picked up a copy Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, Getting into the Gap, which included a free meditation CD.  Getting into the Gap is a great introduction to meditation; and the world of Wayne Dyer. So I thought I would share his practical guidance for meditation and a summary of his nine spiritual principles here on E.Y.D. “

Stumbleupon is thy Addiction

“I recently Stumbled-upon a social bookmarking website for images and photos called Vi.sualize.us.  I found some terrific photos and pop culture quotes that inspired me to put together my fourth collection of inspirational favourites found on Stumble.”

Finding the Zen of closing a sale!

“I remember the feeling of closing a fortune 100 company at first sales gig. I roared a loud triumphant cheer and felt the rush of self-actualization pass through me. Closing that sale felt fantastic, and as with all fantastic things, I wanted more right away. Now that initial rush has changed to more consistent and complete feeling that I carry with me throughout my workday. The simple feeling that I am good at something, I have the power to enjoy it, and it brings me joy to succeed at it.”

15 Pop Culture Love Quotes and Proverbs for the Hopeless Romantic

There is no earthly bliss not watered by tears.”   Pilipino proverb

“When you are in Love you can’t fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams.”   Dr Seuss

“If you understand, things are just as they are: if you do not understand, things are just as they are.”    Zen proverbs

Finding the beauty of sexuality with Erotic Poetry

So I decided to tap into this never ending abyss of desire and share a collection of erotic poetry with my readers. If this blog in anyway contributes to you having just one more sexual encounter in your life…. Wasn’t it worth the read? So what are you waiting for…. Start reading….. or otherwise…. You know what I mean…

13 more Movie quotes for the Enlightened Mind

The Basketball Diaries     Jim Carroll: “You’re growing up. And rain sort of remains on the branches of a tree that will someday rule the Earth. And it’s good that there is rain. It clears the month of your sorry rainbow expressions, and it clears the streets of the silent armies… so we can dance.”

 Have you seen Where the Hell is Matt? And what was his Girlfriend was doing?

” If you love to travel and see the beauty of the world, then you will love his short films featuring his happy feet traveling around the world.  Below is Dancing Matt’s best video.

Following Dancing Matt, is a very funny video that I recently watched about his girlfriend: and what she was doing while Dancing Matt was away.”

The beauty of photography captured in a kiss

Thy Addiction to Stumbleupon has brought forth a new love in my life. The love of photography. The extraordinary amount of breathtaking pictures I have viewed on social media sites has been a wonderful experience. So I have decided to highlight each month, one Photo blog and an assortment of pictures I discover on the net.

Your Daily Cup of Enlightened Zen on E.Y.D

I love The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  I have listed here my favorite quotes from this beautiful book.  This book is an inspiring and motivational read that I love to share with everyone.  You can read my updated list of Quotes from The Alchemist on EnlightenYourDay.com

• “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
• “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

• “Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”

• “When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision. “

• “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

• “Every search begins with beginners luck and ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

• “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

• “The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.”

• “When you want something with all your heart, that’s when you are closest to the Soul of the World. It’s always a positive force.”

• “Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the Language of the World.“

• “To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

• “I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.

• “When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”

• “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity

• When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought.

• Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. You’ve got to find the treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense. “

• “All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.”

• “The alchemists spent years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves.”

• “I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald.”

• “In his pursuit of the dream, he was being constantly subjected to tests of his persistence and courage. So he could not be hasty, nor impatient. If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path.”

You can read my updated list of Quotes from The Alchemist on EnlightenYourDay.com

An inspiring list of my top 20 favorite quotes from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Today, I thought I would share some interesting Paulo Coelho Quotes from an Interview:  “I look at life, using the metaphor of the journey, as a caravan: I know neither whence it came, nor where it’s going.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 “I like to use the term alchemy, which is the soul of the world, or those of Jung’s collective unconscious.  You connect with a space where everything is.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       “Omens are a language, it’s the alphabet we develop to speak to the world’s soul, or the universe’s, or God’s, whatever name you want to give it.  Like an alphabet, it is individual, you only learn it by making mistakes, and that keeps you from globalizing the spiritual quest.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “I think the big danger of madness is not madness itself, but the habit of madness.  What I discovered during the time I spent in the asylum is that I could choose madness and spend my whole life without working, doing nothing, pretending to be mad.  It was a very strong temptation…”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      “’I can’t go on living like this. Because I lost my job at the newspaper, I’d lost my friends and had to give up the theatre…I closed the door to my bedroom and started destroying the whole room, my books that I loved so much…my records, every remnant of the past.They phoned another doctor… When he arrived, he opened the door and confronted all that destruction.  I thought they’d take me straight back to the asylum…I heard him ask me calmly, smiling, ‘What happened here.’ ‘Don’t you see? I’ve wrecked everything’ I told him.  And without batting an eye, answered, ‘Well done! Now that you’ve torn everything to bits, you can start a new life.  You’ve done exactly what you needed to do, no more, no less, you’ve destroyed a negative past in order to embark on a positive future.

Paulo Coelho recites one of his favorite poems by Jorge Luis Borges:

I will not be happy now.  It may not matter.

There are so many more things in the world.

Any random instant is as crowded

And varied as the sea.  A life is brief, and though

The hours seem long, there is another

Dark mystery that lies in wait for us-

Death, that other sea, that other arrow

That frees us from the sun, the moon, and love.

The happiness you gave me once and later

Took back from me will be obliterated.

That which was everything must turn to nothing.

I only keep the taste of my own sadness

And a vain urge that turns me to the Southside,

To a certain corner there, a certain door.

Interesting Paulo Coelho Quotes from an Interview:

The following Paulo Coelho Passage from The Pilgrimage is one of the most amazing passages I have ever read about fighting for our dreams and overcoming the many obstacles in life.  I read it while in Spain; it inspired me to begin my own Pilgrimage and travel to the sacred Cathedral of Saint James in Northern Spain.  Enjoy…                                   

“It is the pleasure of searching and the pleasure of the adventure.  You are nourishing something that’s very important-your dreams.  We must never stop dreaming.  Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.  Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming.  If we don’t, our soul dies… …

The Good fight is the one we fight because our heart asks it of us…                         

 …The Good fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams.  When we’re young our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to fight.  With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat.  So we turn against ourselves and do battle within.  We become our own worst enemy.  We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result or our not having known enough about life.  We kill our dreams because we are afraid to fight the good fight.                                                                                 

The first symptom of the process of killing our dreams is lack of time… The Busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything.  Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short.  The Truth is, they are afraid to fight the good fight…                                                                                                                                

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties.  Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life.    We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors.  But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those engaged in the battle.  For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the good fight.                           

 And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace.  Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give.  In that state we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement.  We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life.  But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams-we have refused to fight the good fight.                                                                              

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a period of tranquility.  But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being.  We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves…What we sought to avoid in combat-disappointment and defeat-came upon us because of our cowardice.  And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breath, and we actually seek death.  It’s death that frees us from out certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of Sunday afternoons.”  The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho P. 58

My favorite passage from Paulo Coelho’s book The Pilgrimage; a must read for dreamers

The Alchemist is my all time favorite book; by my favorite writer Paulo Coelho.  One of the best presents I have ever received, is a first edition signed copy of The Alchemist.  This book is my heart and soul, and I try to share it with as many people as possible.  If you haven’t read this book yet, pick up a copy today.  It will teach you how to make best friends with your heart and realize your dreams.  The following passages are my favorites.  I hope you enjoy.

“I’m alive”, he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon.  “When I’m eating, that’s all I think about.  If I’m on the march, I just concentrate on marching.  If I have to fight, it will be just a good day to die as any other.  “Because I don’t live in either my past or my future.  I’m only interested in the present.  If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man.  You’ll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race.  Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.”  P.89 The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

  “There, he could exchange his book for a thicker one, fill his wine bottle, shave, and have a haircut; he had to prepare himself for his meeting with the girl, and he didn’t want to think about the possibility that some other shepherd, with a larger flock of sheep, had arrived there before him and asked for her hand.  It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting, he thought, as he looked again at the position of the sun, and hurried his pace.  He had suddenly remembered that, in Tarifa, there was an old woman who interpreted dreams.” P.11 The Alchemist  by Paulo Coelho                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “The boy didn’t know what a person’s ‘destiny’ was.   

‘It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish.  Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is.  At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible.  They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives.  But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny…  It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your destiny.  It prepares your spirit and you will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe.  It’s your mission on earth. 

‘Even when all you want to do is to travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?’ 

‘Yes, or even search for treasure.  The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness.  And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy.  To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation.  All things are one.  And, when you want something, all the universe conspires to helping you to achieve it’.”  The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

 At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him.  When he looked intro her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke-the language that everyone on earth is capable of understanding in their heart.  It was love. Something older then humanity, more ancient then the desert.  Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well.  She smiled, and that was certainly an omen-the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life.  The omen he had sought to find with his sheep and in his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert. 

It was the pure language of the World.  It required no explanation, just as the universe need none as it travels through endless time.  What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only women in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing.  He was more certain of it than anything in the world… …And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant.  There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only.  It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world.  Without such love, one’s dreams would have on meaning.  Maktub, thought the boy.”   

P. 97 The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The boy reached through to the soul of the World, and saw that it was part of the soul of God.  And he saw that the soul of God was his own soul.  And that he, a boy, could perform miracles.”  P.160 The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

My favorite passages from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho