Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

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Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse is a fiction book, but has so many situations and influential ideals that it shouldn’t be considered fiction. Its more of a spiritual book, and a great book at that.

The books I’ve been picking up lately are finding themselves to be spiritual journey type books and this one definitely takes the cake. It follows the travels of Brahmin’s son through his journey of life, and speaks from Siddhartha’s mind in the first person, explaining how he learns to find peace in everything around.

It starts off when young Siddhartha listens to his own voice, which tells him he must leave home to find what he’s looking for. Of course, as all fathers would be, his dislikes the idea, but with Siddhartha’s patience, his father understands that it is what must happen, and blesses his son on his journey.

I was sad at the end when Siddhartha has a moment of reflection about how he never does return to his father, but I will leave that for you to be moved by in your own way.

Siddhartha goes from being a Brahmin’s son, to living with the Samanas in the forests begging for food, then leaves to seek Buddha, but finds that what Buddha is teaching, is the same thing that all the rest have taught him, and what he has been searching for his whole life is something that only he can find himself.

Soon after this realization, he leaves his lifelong friend to stay and practice as a monk under the illustrious Buddha to let himself become a Businessman, seeking wealth & love, which in themselves bring many more extravagances. Let it be known that Siddhartha could not keep happy in such a direction.

I found it compelling and very interesting at every new leaf that Siddhartha turns over, every new discovery about his path that he realizes. Its always amazing to take what you learn from such a book and apply it to ones own life, for it makes a lot of strife so much less important in the scheme of things. This is, I assume, what most people who are searching, are looking for.

Read this book, no doubt about it. It will become a book you will reach for again and again.

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Feeling Good

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I came across this article today and I thought it would be best if I came out with a feels good blog too. Cause today feels good, and thats just the good truth of it.

I’m sitting in the living room, got some Gnarles Barkley playing, and I just turned up the bass. Life is good.

 

Enough of the that silly talk.

To feel good is essential to living like a champion. Some people start dwelling on things that they cannot take any sort of control over. To be more specific, some folks start to dwell on things like why can’t ‘this person’ change and do this, why can’t ‘the teacher’ change the curriculum to better suit me, why can’t ‘my roomate’ not slam the door anymore.

You may notice my placement of quotation marks in that previous paragraph; cannily placed by yours truly. It was placed there to pull your attention. It was placed there to hopefully pull your attention to the point that one  shouldn’t look for an answer to the question in a source that is outside of their own circle of influence. Yes, I am stealing this from The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen R. Covey. Mr. Covey points out that there is a circle of influence that everybody has around them. Primarily people we have direct influence on, mainly behavior. Think people like parents and siblings.

A lot of stress can be accumulated from worrying about the wrong thing. I once read something that brought to me the idea of  productive  procrastination. This is basically as it sounds. For example, sometimes one can find themselves fretting over things that they don’t want to do, so they get distracted with little things. Much like what your probably doing now: procrastinating and reading this! 🙂 Either way, I would probably call this productive procrastination because this article aims at focusing on learning the mind, in new and exciting ways. Or, like I believe, it can reinforce facts that you’ve already either known, or feel like you knew. That could be some kind of a paradigm shift if you care to look at it in that light.

The secret to solving this stress and moving into the feeling good place,  is brainstorming, or at least throwing the worry or stress factors around in your head, thinking: “What is it exactly that I’m worrying about?” Soon, yes I promise you, soon you can make a list of things in your life that need to be focused on so that you can reduce the amount of stress, increase productivity, make yourself self happier, and love life a little bit stronger.

I was just about to say that even in the end, the devil wanted to be happy. But then, I am probably influenced by television programming thinking that the devil ever wanted to be happy… Perhaps he only had a interest in doing the baddest, most hate filled things he could think of. So.. bad example.

Remember to focus on things in your life that you can change. Things that you know that you have an influence on, like happiness, being cheerful to people around you, giving support to people around you, having no doubt about your intentions in life, and going for them. What I do to stay focused, is write myself little notes to remind myself of what to focus on, a to do list if you will. Also, I have a quote of the week that inspires me to do what I want to do.

Do you have some ideas on how to make this system more successful? How to continually be a content person at peace with the world? A person who feels good?

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