Nobody sets out to do bad in cold blood. 

They always set out to do right, the good the profitable. 

It's more common to be 'profitable , morals be damned' , but even then there is almost always a  story rationalising  how the other side are better off, or had it coming, cos profitable don't accrue to an undeserving soul.

The soul happens to be a suite of stories, starring the self, and leaders have learnt to rewrite the stories of the multitudes at will.

There are no facts inside the head, only stories. There are no things inside the head, only metaphors.

Waking up needs two threads, one of  unpacking the stories, and another of taking genuine action. there is always a spark, a call.

You need to build out our story event by event, and reading others' stories only delays writing your own

it's necessary to be not-good-enough in all areas and aspects except one, and being just good-enough at that. else each effort will be tinged with  failure to meet 'greatness' standards, and the tinges will accumulate to build up enough spiritual plaque and soon enough you'll have a burn out - the spiritual equivalent of a heart attack

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you cannot do what is right. you can only do what seems right to you. and if it isn't good to you, it fails the 'is-it-right' test. 

morality, like achievements, is what the last guy did. while it does get handed down to us on stone tablets , they are ( cue Captain Barbossa here)   more like guidelines. The Steve Jobs quote about walls is probably the most profound gift that the man has given to the world, and the ipod and iphone and itunes just being an illustration of that, the 'ma', and Emerson's "know what is true for you is true for the world ..."

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the opening lines and points of all self help books stand like unsurmountable stone walls that I must break with only my head....    one day I will

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one piece from Lord of War kept calling for my attention. 

Never go to war, especially with yourself.

Selling arms causes deaths, and unstable societies , and nasty brutish lives all around, and eventually finds its way home. (But all evil is just potential in need of transformation, later )

so, selling arms to make good for yourself, vs the world.

so, personal profit ,vs, the world. 

this is a question that will be asked every step of the way, but some large scale choices gives you time to build larger things and change status-quo s in more powerful ways. still large power of good breeds large power of evil (star wars, anyone ?)

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here's an idear. time spent reading email counts as addiction, and away from your real work of cathedral building. or tilling your own plot of voltaire land.

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in personal life, I separate the mind and body and personal, and in my work, I cannot keep the object model ,the domain model and the implementation model separate. 

thanks to sicpers.info, and sadhguru book.

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logic is an animal in the mind zoo. there are others too. and a 'human' is nothing more than an animal who can consistently put in a quasi formal-logical system what happens 'out there' in the world outside the darkness behind the eyes (credit TP)

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Locke said about 3 things the mind can do with ideas . A variation is to put the things that make you feel,  in a , and this is important , straight line

aside - inventory site for emotions and activities - a new face for the todo list. feedback will feed your heart rate and a manually added tag  - one of  :)  or :|  or :(  or :\ or :P.   to it, to set the sort order.

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we could sell it to shrinks

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For the well read but unwise, the own self and spark stand out as weird, as exposure to the variety out there will set yourself far from the mean, and unconventional and weird and to be stamped out,  when ironically, that distance from the mean is what makes one normal in the non statistical sense, AND defines normal in the statistical one.

Thus the conformist kills the spark within and wanders ,listening life ,like old herons in fished out ponds

All progress needs a paradoxical or complementary pair of attitudes, goals and or skills. 

Good and bad most always reside together in the same person.the analytical, with a list of goods and bans will never draw a line separating the world into two. 

And people see, hear and believe what they want. Sometimes, they want right, good and profitable.

Tools of the heart:applied buddhist technique