My First Post-A passage from Ignited Minds

05/11/2011 04:47:24
I start the blog with a passage from Ignited Minds by Dr. Abdul Kalam. I read this passage on 24th of jan when i was totally desperate abt not being on the ship again due to the inconvenience created by one of my own college mates. I had just got off the phone with Senthil, who is currently enjoying his time as 3rd officer in an Executive Ship management vessel, though I could sense some sadness in leaving the company. This phone call had just instigated the pent up anger in me abt not being able to use my time wisely. Then I read a random chapter of the above book which turned out to be below.
"For the society to prosper there are two important needs. They are: prosperity through wealth generation and cherishing the value system of the people. The combination of the two will make the Nation truly strong and prosperous"(Note that he used caps N for National...such is the patriotism).
In this chapter Kalam emphasises the need for value based education and the importance of parents, teacher and guru in such a system. The thing that most interested me was the below passage:
From Abdul Kalam's Ignited Minds:
Chapter 4, pg 70, Learning from Saint and Seers:
"I always tell the young to dream. This message comes from the understanding that each one of us has within ourselves the ability to create the circumstances for success-to attract, so to say, to ourselves what we desire. When as a child Einstein first saw a compass he was fascinated by the way the needle moved whenever he changed direction. Watching the needle became an obsession with him as he tried to understand the invisible force that moved the compass needle. Where was the force located? Who controlled it? Why did it always work? What was it made of? Were there places where it didn't operate? It is of course the magnetic energy of the earth that keeps pulling the compass needle, a tiny magnet, along the north-south axis of the earth's magnetic field. But is that all there is to it?
We can easily see the magnetic field at work, but cannot detect it with our senses, even though it is everywhere on our planet. Logically then, it is in us also.
Similarly, our planet is in a perpetual state of motion as it goes spinning through space. Everything on the planet is a part of this movement, even though it appears to us that we are motionless. I am on the planet and thus part of the energy that moves it. The energy that is the very essence of the planet is in me.
Dyer argues that we can use this universal energy to bring to us the objects of our desire, because what we desire is also in us and vice versa. It becomes a matter of alignment and will that allows us to tap into this force."