“It is not the critic who counts…” Theodore Roosevelt

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, Paris 1910.

A Treatise on Confusion

My teacher used to say:

“Confusion is a high state as long as you don’t stay there.”

Confusion means that something new is coming into our consciousness that we haven’t quite accepted yet. An old thought form or belief system is still in place and we’re not quite ready to let it go.There is a cross over between these two thought energies pulling at our mind.

This is confusion.

It’s a high state because we are moving from an old paradigm into a new one. This is progress, evolution or involution. People who are perpetually confused and confounded are not the subject of this discussion! We are talking about movement into new higher territory and the mental friction that is part of the natural process of getting there.

His Holiness the 14th Dalia Lama Historic Visit to Iowa May 18th 2010