Love

Love is the only thing that can be given away even if you have never received it.

Thinking (part 2)

If you spend all your time worrying about what others think of you, then someone else is doing the thinking for you.

Choices

Every choice you make either enhances your spirit or drains it.  Carolyn Myss

Thought Control

The danger of being a parent is how easy it is to make your child think like you do.

Thinking

If your life is so busy that you have "no time to think", then someone else is doing the thinking for you.

Awakened

When God gives you 2 options, you are actually getting 3 choices.

Oprah:  How would you define awakened?

Phong:  Remember the movie The Matrix?

Oprah:  Yes.

Phong:  In the movie most people are asleep in the real world while they live in the Matrix and only a few like Neo and Trinity are awakened to live in the real world.

Oprah:  So you are saying that if a person is awakened he or she would be like a Neo or a Trinity?

Phong:  Yes... and no.  In the movie, a person is "awakened" because someone had pulled him out of the Matrix.  He has no choice but to live in the real world.  A person either lives in the Matrix his whole life and not know anything about the real world.  Or he gets to see the truth and lives in the real world but never gets to go back to his old life before he was awakened.  There is still no choice for either situation.

Oprah:  Whoa!  Back up a little bit for me here.  Are you saying that Neo and Trinity are NOT awakened?

Phong:  In the context of the movie, they are awakened.  But the analogy is not enough to explain spiritual awakening.   Let me give you another example.

[Phong takes off his left shoe and hands it to Oprah.]

Phong:  Ok, Oprah... now choose.

Oprah:  Choose what?

Phong:  Exactly!  You can't choose because it's just one option.  Having one option is the same as having no option.

[Phong takes off the other shoe and hands both shoes to Oprah.]

Phong:   Now choose again.

[Oprah takes the right one.]

Oprah:  Did I make the right choice?

Phong:  If the right choice means the right shoe, then "Yes" you did!

[Both laugh.]

Phong:  I think to be spiritually awakened a person first needs to know that there exist two worlds, similar to the Matrix and the real world.  But more importantly, he should know that he has a choice.  He can choose to be in either world...or to be in both at the same time.

Oprah:  Both?

Phong:  Yes, both.  When God gives you 2 options, He is actually giving you 3 choices.  When you choose to be in both, you are constantly walking a conscious path...or as Thich Nhat Hanh likes to say... the mindful path.  You continue to live in the world of illusions, but you are constantly aware of that fact.

The act of choosing where you want your mind and soul to be makes your life a conscious life.  Because when you choose, you are making a conscious choice.  And making a conscious choice about everything at every moment of your life makes your life an awakened life.

Reality

Reality is not what happens to you.  It is how your mind interprets what happens to you.