10 Human Regrets - from the book - The leader who had no title - Robin Sharma

1. You reach your last day with the brilliant song that your life was meant to sing still silent within you.
2. You reach your last day without ever having experienced the natural power that inhabits you to do great work and achieve great things.
3. You reach your last day realizing that you never inspired anyone else by the example you set.
4. You reach your  last day full of pain at the realization that you never took an bold risks and so you never received any bright rewards.
5. You reach your last day understanding that you missed the opportunity to catch a glimpse of mastery because you bought into the lie that you had to be resigned to mediocrity.
6. You reach your last day and feel heartbroken that you never learned the skill of transforming adversity into victory and leading into gold.
7. You reach your last day regretting that you forgot that work is about being radically helpful to others rather than being helpful only to yourself.
8. You reach your last day with the awareness that you ended up living the life that society trained you to want versus leading the life you truly wanted to live.
9. You reach your last day and awaken to the fact that you never realized your absolute best nor touched the special genius that you were built to become.
10. You reach your last day and discover you could have been a leader and left this world so much better than you found it. But you refused to accept that mission because you were just too scared. And so you failed. And wasted a life.
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An excerpt from The Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho

...From the diary of Maria - the main protagonist from the book The Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho

I have met a man and have fallen in love with him. I allowed myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I am not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months' time I will be far away and he will be just a memory, but I could not stand living without love any longer; I had reached my limit.

I am writing a story for Ralf Hart - thats his name. I am not sure he will come back to the club where I work, but, for the first time in my life, that does not matter.
Its enough just enough to love him, to be with him in my thoughts and to color this lovely city with his steps, his words, his love. When I leave this country, it will have a face and a name and the memory of a fireplace. Everything else I experienced here, all the difficulties I had to overcome, will be as nothing compared to that memory. I would like to do for him what he did for me. I have been thinking about it a lot, and I realize that I did not go into cafe by chance; really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm of life, then the the unknown reveals itself, and our unverse changes direction.

Everyone knows how to love, because we are all born with that gift. Some people have a natural talent for it, but the majority of us have to re-learn to remember how to love, and everyone, without exception needs to burn on the bonfire of past emotions, to relive certain joys and griefs, certain ups and owns, until they can see the connecting thread that exists behind each new encounter; because there is a connection thread. 

And then our bodies learn to speak the language of soul, known as sex, and that is what I can give to the man who gave me back my soul, even though he has no idea how important he is to my life. That is what he asked me for and that is what he will have; I want him to be very happy....

Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. From that point onwards, things change, the man and the woman come into play, but what happens before - that attraction that brought them together - is impossible to explain. It is untouched desire in its purest state.

When desire is still in this pure state, the man and the woman fall in love with life, they live each moment reverently, consiously always ready to celebrate the next belssing. When people feel like this, they are not in a hurry, they do not precipitate events with unthinking actions. They know that the inevitable will happen, that what is real always finds a way of revealing itself.
Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.
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An Ethical Stance

If we are looking for a purpose broader than our interests, soemthing that will allow us to see our lives as possessing significance beyond the narrow confines of our own conscious states, one obvious solution is to take up the ethical point of view. The ethical point of view does require us to go beyond a personal point of view to the standpoint of an impartial spectator. Thus looking at things ethically is a way of transcending our inward looking concerns and identifying ourselves with the most objective point of view possible - with, as Sidgwick puts it, "The Point of view of the universe"
- Peter Singer

I could synthesize these words of Singer with your observation of a transcendent being from Prof. Mihaly -

Strange as it may seem, life becomes serene and enjoyable precisely when selfish pleasure and personal success are no longer the guiding goals. When self loses itself in a transcendent purpose, it becomes largely invulnerable to the fears and setbacks of ordinary existence. Psychic energy becomes focused on goals that are meaningful, that advance order and complexity, that will continue to have an effect in the consciousness of new generations long after our departure from this world, even after we are long forgotten.
- Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly

As Howard Gardner observes an ethical mind is a mind which has evolved to a state, which he puts in the equation -

Person -> Other Persons -> Role (The Point of view of the universe)


And again when Victor Frankl puts forward -

Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue..as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself
- Viktor Frankl

Putting these into perspective what occurs to me is that the secret of a perpetual happiness and an inspired life is nothing but getting to the stage of an "Ethical Mind" (Gardner) or "Transcendental Self" (Mihaly) or a person with a deep logos (Frankl)

It appears to be straight forward to me, that a person's gradual progression from being a disciplined mind (entering into flow), to a synthesizing mind, and then to a creative mind, further evolving finally to an Ethical mind is the path to ultimate fulfillment of life.

If it is so easy and straightforward, why then people get lost? Is it only an ignorance of this realization, or there are other blockages that hinder a person comprehension to this outlook? Or may be there are other models to look into life...Or the the model in which the minds of the current civilization is based on is flawed?



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