Still stewing in my muses

From Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love are some quotes I find by themselves worth the book.

From Italy:
*The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated.

*I'm exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of nasty choices and chaotic passions.

*And the question now for me is, What are my choices to be? What do I believe I deserve in this life? Where can I accept sacrifice, and where can I not?

*We are the mayors of this town's ass.

*Everthing sad leaked through me and left damp traces behind.

*In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible...To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business. (The pastor preached this past Sunday on Echoes: the Desire of Beauty...how the Lord put beauty on the earth and the desire for it in our hearts. When we see beauty and yearn to be with and a part of it, we are experiencing the echo of God's voice in us. I very much like that idea.)

*You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

From India:
*Yoga is about self-mastery and the dedicated effort to haul yourself away from your endless brooding over the past and your nonstop worrying about the future, so that you can seek instead, a place of eternal presence from which you may regard yourself and your surroundings with poise.

*Remember, everything you do, you do for God. And everything God does, He does for you.

*Nothing pisses off a control freak more than life not goin' her way.

*I have searched frantically for contentment for so many years in so many ways, and all these acquisitions and accomplishments - they run you down in the end. Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death.

*Look for God...Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.

*Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline.

From Indonesia:
*[from a Sufi poem] God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.

*Fear - who cares?

Now, how to go about applying all this? Especially being the mayor of the ass part of town...deep ponderings required.

A month ago, we attended Sunday school with my parents. The leader commenced with a question "What is wisdom? Define it" I said wisdom is knowledge applied. Well then, what is knowledge? I believe that knowledge is information understood. It's a freakin' 3 step process to wisdom, and with the onslaught of information in today's tech age, we're spending so much time just WEEDING info, that we've got less time to carefully consider the important data, understand it and then work towards application. We may be the least wise age of all time, and supurphluous information could be a leading cause. Sometimes more is just more. But I think the above quotes are all worth consideration, understanding and application; the trifecta for wisdom.