And the year is gone...

Humans have a habit of creating rituals, special occasions and dates, which really don't exist in life as a tangible thing. And yet, these things can change a country's economy or an entrepreneur's decision.

There is a psychological effect in those rituals, and now that the year is almost gone, it is good to take advantage of it. One day, scientists will prove that a person gets a boost of energy when a new year is coming. What people call hope or opportunity, they will name some kind of endorphin...

There is no doubt that even economy seems to be better, news in general improve (its goodness...) and we think of very difficult things as if they were the easiest ones, but let's take a step further and use this chance of universal mood shift to take a look at the self; perhaps we still have kept our "2014 goals" or we had a few wishes to be fulfilled this year. Were they?

This is a wonderful opportunity to do a balance, to go and hide yourself from all the noise around, and explore within. This balance will help you in setting new goals for the coming year and also to reflect on the improvements you need for yourself.

Because it is not only a year that is gone - part of your life has been gone too. By checking what happened to it, you can progress even more next year.

After all, don't you feel: THIS IS THE YEAR!! So, make the balance, keep the best and develop the worse, and enjoy the adventure of life.

The magic of Christmas

There were two magicians who lived in a mountain, which were not mountains like any other, as the two magicians were the protectors of wildlife magical beings living there. For many centuries, their ancestors took care of those mountains, isolating them from other humans, but in the last century - and being the last of their kind, these men have seen that the total isolation was impossible.

Concerned, they get together to talk, fearing that men and women of the two nearby villages would damage the beautiful mountains and would make the beings living there suffer. After all, what most people saw was suffering in their lives: divorces, unnecessary deaths, poverty, depression, fatigue, corruption, exploitation, etc.

Both reached an agreement: the best way to avoid evil is to improve these two villages. But they disagreed with the method as one magician thought they should make the villages into paradise, the other thought that this process should be gradual. After much discussion, they decided to apply both methods in different villages.

The first village - which saw the mountains bathe in sunlight at dawn - went to sleep in the deep unhappiness of their lives, just to wake up completely transformed: poor people got beautiful houses, ugly people got beautiful faces, and streets woke with lots of green and gold... Frightened and amazed, the inhabitants of this town took to the streets to celebrate the transformation, praising their gods. They went dancing and dancing, happy with the amount of food available and how everything worked alone, as if by magic.

In the early years, the experience proved successful, but one day, a neighbor thought his neighbor had stolen a dozen apples. They fought and they went to sleep very angry with each other. Slowly, anger, greed, lust, attachment and arrogance were taking over the hearts of people, and ten years after the magic, little remained of paradise.

Disgusted, magicians focused on the second village - which saw the mountain bathe in sunlight at twilight – as they went to sleep in the deep unhappiness of their lives. The next day, however, many parts of the town had various plants. Slowly, entire fields could give food and within a year, everyone had what to eat.

The magician, who had that idea, went to live in that village and managed to bring together people of good heart, people able to forgive and love unconditionally. He trained them with patience to love others and help them to love one another. Slowly, divorces were disappearing. He are also trained them in the art of medicine, recognizing herbs that could heal present in nature, and how to take care of personal finance. He also taught them how to care for those who have nothing, enabling them to achieve something in their lives. After ten years, that village reached to the same level as the former village had begun, as a paradise on Earth.

With the success of their experiment, they did the same with the first village, and the same results emerged; that village in ten years had become also a paradise.

They understood that paradise, for a human being, is not something external or artificial; it must be born in the hearts of everyone. Humbly, magicians left their experiment and opened completely the way for the magic mountains, as humans were now as magical as the beings that lived there. And finally, these wizards withdrew from the world, waiting for the beautiful death, knowing their duty has been fulfilled.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A Christmas Palette

Once upon a time, a small boy looked at a plane in the sky.

It was unexpected. This boy were living at Gray City, where everything was, well, gray: buildings, cars, houses, clothes and, of course, the sky. They told him it was a very prosperous place to live and his family was very happy there. They used to express their happiness sitting in front of the TV set; with little messages on the screen, they knew very well when to laugh, smile, be sad and cry. Their food was also gray...

The little boy did not like to live there. He didn't like to eat gray food everyday - he would love to eat yellow, orange and red food at some point in life!! He didn't like to go to a gray school, where very gray teachers used to teach him gray things - he would love to learn green and blue lessons!

And one day, after a very gray fight with his gray mom, he saw the plane... It was so high in the sky, he couldn't believe he was seeing it; besides, he would swear he was also seeing a patch of... of BLUE!! Yes, around the plane!! Almost invisible, but it was there. He touched his eyes, he touched his heart, and he thanked for that gift. After all, it was Christmas Eve...

From that day on, something happened to him. It started in his dreams: they became blue. Later, he also started to have yellow, orange, red and even purple dreams!

Later, in his mind there was always a patch of blue... sometimes, he could also have green and yellow ideas.

Slowly, he changed. His family could not understand him and they tried to turn him gray again; his teachers did not like him and cause him more troubles than ever, and even his friends were scared of him.

What nobody knew was that he saw the blue sky and he saw the plane and he knew, one day, he would jump into that plane and go to a place, where you could find any color you wanted.

Scared as they were, forcefully trying to change him back into a normal and common gray, they could not do anything... And the small boy grew up into a wonderful guy.

And one day, in another Christmas Eve day, he jumped into a plane, leaving to Multicolor City. And he was so happy...

After one year, however, things did not go as he wanted. He missed things from his city...

What he realized one evening is that even though they have so many colors, still they were all gray inside.

Ok, that was not true... His boss for instance was a perfect red, and his neighbor upstairs, she was totally blue. And then she remembered a friend of a friend at Gray city who was totally a green one. Slowly, he changed... Because colors were not outside.

Nowadays, he is living at Blue City. He constantly goes to Gray City to visit friends and family who appreciate him as he is. Sometimes, he also goes to Multicolor City to enjoy the Carnival and meet friends he got there. And his mind is open for all colors of life...

Ah, did I say that evening when he realized that was... yes, right! Christmas Eve...

A different Christmas

Try to do something different this year.

What do you do for Christmas anyway? Eating, drinking and giving gifts, that's how it goes...

So, let's make some changes in it.

Instead of eating, did you try to feed someone else? I don't mean literally, but there are so many communities around the world, perhaps very close to you, where people don't have much to eat; go there, share what you have with them and appreciate the beauty of Christmas in another point of view. Sing with them, tell them stories and feed them with pieces of your wonderful life.

Drinking? Try to drink water for once. Yes, try to keep yourself healthy and with your mind so clear. Don't let yourself get disturbed by others' arguments, on the contrary enjoy their power and energy, and enjoy their love and passion.

And at the time of giving gifts, remember to smile. Remember to wish the other person well. Remember to give it from the heart, and you will be living a wonderful different merry Christmas.

Is there any chance for world peace?

One of the best techniques movie directors use to keep attention from a very unstable audience, is to create hope in them. Just imagine a terror movie, or nowadays almost any action or detective movie; the best ones are not much the ones that show all gore, blood and flesh, but those that, even though there is a real threat, will give you the false sensation the hero or heroine is going to be saved after all. You spend around two hours waiting for that magical moment where everything goes right, and no matter how many deaths happened you will be happy.

Watching daily news have become similar to watch one of those movies. Sometimes, it seems the world is on the edge of a world peace moment. You can feel from the presenters' words, your president or prime minister's speech, even your neighbors and peers' chat at work. And then... Yes, the monster comes back and destroys all the good.

It is only hope that sustains us in all this process; an illogical hope the monster will be not only defeated, but it will be the last one. And we go and go day by day to watch the news. And if you are one of those very conscious people who stopped to listen to news from a company, you are still very attentive to the gossips around you and the comments on that. And you will keep hope in your heart, all the time.

It is only hope that sustains our economy, lifestyle and all that represents us as a society. Due to hope, pure hope, millions of dollars, even billions, move from one place to another. It is hope that is making some economies stumble back, as if you look with a very cynical eye, there is no reason for that to happen. It is hope that made you to buy that new TV screen in a world that seems to slowly stop watching TV, or purchasing a house where many experts say it is something to avoid.

Will this hope come to life at any point in time? Will we, you and I have the greatest opportunity to stop watching news, or listening to them, or talking to peers at the office about what happened in this or that war, terrorist attack or one of the many forms we see of violence nowadays?

With hope, I feel that day will come. Looking at our own history, I feel that day will come, and it will last more than one day. And the monster, one day, won't come back anymore...