A journal on life's amusing ironies: Cleaning Lady

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Cleaning Lady

Walking one day to the bus stop nearest my campus, I saw my friend Robbie wave to a lady in this humongous, obviously expensive SUV.

"Is she a high level manager or something?" I inquired, after the SUV plowed through the street.

"She's the cleaning lady...", he nonchalantly replied.

It was probably sarcasm... He probably didn't want to admit that he was well connected in the campus.

But I didn't relent. "No really, who is she?"

"The cleaning lady." And I knew he wasn't joking or anything. I looked back and tried to remember the SUV again. She could afford that? Was that even possible? That SUV was probably at least 40k.

Lesson: Don't underestimate the cleaning lady.

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Quotes

"Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience. Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them."
--Byron Katie

"True surrender is more like saying 'Please relieve me of my dollar. I really don't want or need it. I want to experience the joy of not having it...'"
--Adyashanti

"If you know the highest you can achieve is total failure, then the bar is set pretty low."
--Adyashanti

"If we lived forever, if the dews of Adashino never vanished, if the crematory smoke on Toribeyama never faded, men would hardly feel the pity of things. The beauty of life is in its impermanence. Man lives the longest of all living things... and even one year lived peacefully seems very long. Yet for such as love the world, a thousand years would fade like the dream of one night."
--Kenko Yoshida

"What I know about dying is that when there's no escape, when you know that no one is coming to save you, there's no fear... You no longer have anything to lose. And in that peace, there is only you."
--Byron Katie

"This moment, stop right where you are. Stop all effort to get whatever you think will give you fulfillment, whatever you think will give you truth. All that is required is one instant of truly stopping."
--Gangaji

"...If he pulled the trigger, and shot me dead, I'd be fine. Truly and utterly fine. I could see the bullet going into my body, my body dying but not me. I was the consciousness aware of this consciousness that was aware of itself. And That cannot die. This consciousness that I am cannot die. I knew that if this body fell dead, I would remain. That which I realized in that moment was the most freeing and simple of Truths. Death was nothing."
--Judith Crop, "Awake at Gunpoint"

"...There truly is no separation. No aspect of "me" is in opposition to the emptiness which it is made from. I do not exist. More accurately, I am existence itself. I include everything I see and everything I don't see. I am not bound by the event of me. The event of me is infused with who I truly am."
--Roslyn Moore, "This Bursting Heart"

[It is a] myth that [when I’m truly enlightened] I can rest in some assuredness that I will never again feel insecure, or feel fear, or feel doubt, or feel those emotions that we don’t want to feel. Forget it. That’s not it. That’s the pipe dream. That’s the opium that’s sold to the masses. And they eat it up and they never get there, and they end up disillusioned. That’s not how it works. Freedom is never freedom “from.” If it’s freedom “from” anything, it’s not freedom at all. It’s freedom “to.” Are you free enough to be afraid? Are you free enough to feel insecure? Are you free enough not to know? Are you free enough to know that you can’t know? Are you free enough to be totally comfortable, to know that you can’t know what’s around the next corner? How you will feel about it? How you will respond to it? That you literally can’t know? Are you free enough to be totally at ease and comfort with the way things actually are? That’s freedom.
--Adyashanti

"Those losses caused me to improve more & wake up [to] the meaning & purpose of my life."
--Manny Pacquiao

"Every rejection is a brick on my castle"

"There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way."
--Christopher Morley

"Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
--Viktor Frankl

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
--Viktor Frankl

"Maximus set an example of self-mastery, steadiness of purpose, and good cheer that no circumstance, not even illness, could extinguish. He combined in beautiful measure gravity with charm, and he did whatever needed to be done without making a fuss. Everyone believed what he said was what he thought and that he never acted with an intention to do harm of give offense. Nothing surprised or frightened him, and he never seemed to be in a hurry or slow to accomplish a task.
He was neither intimidated and embarrassed on one hand, nor aggressive and suspicious on the other. So giving, forgiving, and loyal was he by nature that he appeared to be a man whose virtues were inborn rather than acquired. It is unimaginable that anyone ever felt inferior or superior around him, perhaps as a result of his pleasing sense of humor."
--Marcus Aurelius, "Emperor's Handbook"

"Only when you seek the truth within will you find the love you can never lose."

--Byron Katie, A Thousand Names For Joy

"No man is a failure who has friends."

--It's A Wonderful Life

A journal on life's amusing ironies

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Cleaning Lady

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