Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is not affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition.

I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old person asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it.

I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart?

All paths are the same, they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor’s question has meaning now. “Does this path have a heart?” One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

The trouble is nobody asks the question: and when a person finally realizes that they have taken a path without heart, the path is ready to kill them. At that point very few people stop to deliberate and leave the path.

A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

For my part there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.

And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.

- Don Juan
Apprentice to a Yaqui Sorcerer
Sourced from http://www.whale.to/a/path_with_a_heart.html

Yesterday I imagined having an enormous whiteboard in my room. I could write up clouds of notes for different blog post ideas, leave the ideas up there for a few days and jot down more thoughts as I came up with them. I’d have space to have a few ideas going at once because the whiteboard would be huge. So I wrote on Twitter:

Dear universe: I would like an entire wall of my room to be a whiteboard. Thank-you!

Within a few minutes, the universe (twitterverse?) answered. First @maadonna suggested whiteboard paint, and also a great place to buy huge whiteboards. Then @brendam told me of a scheme to create huge whiteboards with cheap shower wall panels from Bunnings. At first I was sceptical of actually fitting a whiteboard in my room (it’s tiny) and finding a way to mount it on my wall (I’m renting), but the idea of blutacking a lightweight piece of plastic to my wall sounds like it just might work.

I’m amazed at how quickly a solution came. When I wrote the original tweet, I was only half serious, and I didn’t think I could really do it. Once the suggestions came, I soon has a feasible way to make it happen. Without even trying!

I do believe a trip to Bunnings is in order.

The following is an adaptation of the recipe for Sue’s Super Soup found in Karen Knowler’s 50 Quick, Easy, Healthy & Delicious Raw Food Recipes ebook.

Ingredients:

• One avocado
• Two tomatoes
• Juice of one orange
• Two tablespoons flaxseed oil (or olive oil. Flaxseed oil contains omega 3 for those of us who don’t eat fish.)
• Four tablespoons sultanas (try more or less if it’s too sweet or not sweet enough)
• A dash of tamari OR soy sauce OR a pinch of salt (just a little bit!)
• Some red or green capsicum, finely sliced

Directions:

1. Place everything except the capsicum in a blender.
2. Blend to a smooth consistency.
3. Pour into a soup bowl, garnish with capsicum. This adds a bit of texture to the soup.
4. Serve with crunchy toast for dipping, or flax crackers if you’d like to keep the meal entirely raw.

Serves one. Enjoy!

Just a short check-in this week. It’s even a short intro. Let’s get to it!

The hard stuff

Random stress

Couldn’t I just accept that things are not too bad right now and enjoy the stuff that’s working out well? Seems not, at least not all the time. Note to self: Life Is Pretty Okay. Don’t stress!

The good stuff

Development!

Last week, I wrote about setting goals centered around character development instead of around producing an external result. I picked out persistence as the attribute I wanted to develop, so I decided to spend an hour per day for a week working on a project. The project I picked was to develop a little web app to help me review my new followers on Twitter.

I finished the week successfully (yay!) and the application’s taking shape. The whole thing’s been quite fun, and the hardest part has been coming up with a name for it. My eternal gratitude to anyone who has a suggestion!

As I get further into it, I see that I could take the idea further than I originally anticipated, and I’m coming up with lots of ways to make the project more interesting and to make some money on the side as I go. I have to credit my initial intention for this. My definition of success on this project is to persist – to keep putting in the time even when obstacles come up. If I were purely aiming to make money, I would have been put off as soon as I realised I had competitors.

And all this aside, dev work is fun. I like coding, figuring out how to do new and interesting things. So horray for interesting projects!

That’s it!

Catch you next week! And feel free to join me in the comments. What was the hard and the good in your week?