345. Charity

Give to charity. Give wisely. Pick charities that are important to you and support them. A part of all you earn is yours to give away to charity. You should allocate your income as follows : -

Income %
€100

Full 100
Tax 30
Debt 30
Expenses 21
Savings 9
Charity 10
Investment 9

When you give to charity you should give 10%. This is one tenth. The meaning of the word "tithe" is to give 10%.

Give to your charities with an open heart. Give gladly. Do not resent your gift. Operating on this basis, be careful about where you choose to give. Everywhere there are people who have plans for your money. It is yours until you give it and only you have the right to plan for its use.

Everywhere there are "charities" that spend more on administration than on the causes they claim to support. You should be clear in your mind that this is nothing more than exploitation of the cause for the benefit of the organisers and is nothing short of fraud. Have nothing to do with these organisations.

Another form of exploitation is the phenomenon of "chuggers". This is a portmanteau word made up of the "ch" in charity and the "uggers" in muggers. It is the practice of mugging people on the street for charity. When you put money in a collection box you have no guarantee that the person holding it will ever return the money to the cause. Avoid them like the plague that they are.

When choosing a charity to support, do not be swayed by emotional appeals. Check out the bona fides of the charity and only give if the money is going to the cause and not the organisation. Demand to see their latest audited accounts before you give and only give if you are satisfied.

Build giving to charity into your budget. That way, at the start of each year you will know how much you intend to give and when you intend to give it and to which charity. Then you have made the decision once and for all and can forget about it until you are preparing your budget for next year. This is basically a mind-clearing sytem. Do not entertain appeals for anything else during the year (but keep the appeals on file for your next budget.) If you wish, you can budget for emergencies like floods, volcanoes etc. and keep money in a fund for that, earning interest.

344. One less excuse

"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use." - Earl Nightingale

343. Observation

Sharpen and keep sharp your skills of observation and raise tour level of awareness, your attention. Start playing Kim's Game (Rudyard Kipling and Baden Powell), using a tray full of objects. Look at them for 1 minute then see how many you can remember.

One of the reasons we do this is that the range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. Because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change and grow until we begin to notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts words and deeds. - R.D.Laing

342. Steven Covey on Choice

Between stimulus (what's presented to you) and response (your reaction) is a space or gap. In that gap is your freedom to choose. The bigger that space, the greater your range of choices and the greater your potential for happiness. In that space alone you have the ability to grow learn love and further expand the space. It is only in how you use it to expand or contract that you can determine your present and future states.

The direction of our work here is to expand and grow mentally, physically and spiritually. This can be done by meditation and Tai Chi, the study of great literature and scriptures as well as your conscious decision to swim upstream against the social, cultural and genetic currents that seek to drag you down.

341. To Work with Love

"We can all do small things with great Love." -Mother Teresa of Calcutta

"...And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads from your own heart as if the cloth were to be worn by your beloved..." - Khalil Gibran (The Prophet)

Try to work always with Love in your heart, that way it won't be like work at all.

340. Wake up the Good Men

Edmund Burke once said : "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." In this he was perfectly correct. Everywhere, good men are falling asleep and into laziness. It is your duty to wake them up.

339. Do Not Trust Princes, States, Bureaucrats etc.

Put not your trust in princes, generals, states, bureaucrats, organisations, quangos, lawyers or servants of the state. They will always plead expediency while cheerfully spilling your blood from a safe distance. The same applies to politicians, leaders and rulers of any kind.

338. Points of View

In a room full of saints, a thief will only see pockets to be picked.

Generally speaking, people only ever see things from their own point of view. If your mind embraces the truth and truth permeates your mind, you will begin to see things from the point of view of the Absolute, the Creator.

John Steinbeck in his book, Cannery Row describes how the hero, Doc Ricketts' mind loved true things.

337. Timing

Timing is everything. In life, in business and in gambles, your timing and execution must be perfect. Sometimes there comes a chance; the fates give you something special. You take that chance and you seize the big pot.

336. Open Discussions

Important matters should be discussed openly. Private agreements can often be misinterpreted by either side.

335. Trust Yourself

Work every day on being trustworthy, then learn to trust only your own self. Be prepared for betrayal, for instant fligh or instant fight.

334. There is No Excuse for Failure

In training and in games, sports etc., "failure" is permitted as it is a necessary part of the learning process, even in the Martial Arts. For the Samurai, however, the first law of survival is that if you are caught unawares, betrayed unawares, or killed unawares, you have failed in your duty to yourself and to your family. For this type of failure, there is no excuse.

333. Sieze Your Opportunities

The mafioso, Joe Bonnano attributed his success to the constant and continual seizing of opportunities as they arose. Because he was a criminal, do not confuse this advice with an instruction to commit crimes. The principle, however is still sound. Seize the opportunities as they arise. Don't do it just once, make a practice of it so that it becomes a habit. Often what happenns is that an opportunity presents itself and you recognise it. Then, because you can't quite see how the fine details can be worked out, you hesitate, lose confidence and let it slip away. Once you are sure, go for it then work out the details later. Just make sure the down side is protected and there is a way to recover any loss.

"When you know exactly what to do, to hesitate is to lose." - The Samurai, Katsumata.

332. Keep your own "Ultra" Secret

When you have a source of information on your enemy, do not give the game away. Do not let them know that you know or how you know what you know. Treat all your sources of intelligence the way the British treated Ultra during World War 2. They never acted on a piece of information obtained through Ultra unless that information could have been obtained by less secret means. Don't compromise your sources or your spies.