Tuesday, April 15, 2008



Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.

-Agent Smith from the movie "The Matrix"

Friday, April 11, 2008


My father, Bill Gallagher’s favorite authors (whom he would quote so often in his keynote speaking) were Henry David Thoreau, Helen Keller, George Bernard Shaw, Werner Erhard and Shakespeare.

Thoreau once described, "The mass of mankind" as leading "lives of quiet desperation." While this was true of my father’s life as well, he believed more in the words of Helen Keller who said, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature." and that "All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming."

In the 80's he was very inspired by a man named Werner Erhard who got many great idea's from Zen Buddhism, Werner said, "If you experience it, it’s the truth. The same thing believed is a lie. In life, understanding is the booby prize."

My father would often quote Shakespeare about the human condition written hundreds of years ago, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day. To the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools. The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Of all these authors, my father most believed in and lived his life like the words of George Bernard Shaw, who said:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."

Forgive all those you know. Love all those you meet, and make a difference in life while you’re here. Each moment is worth everything!

The only real truth is what we experience in the present moment, and dad taught me that always showing up and loving unconditionally was what it was all about.

Monday, January 28, 2008


Wim Hof, of the Netherlands, stands up to his neck in ice for an hour and twelve minutes, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2008, outside the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, during a successful attempt to break his previous world record for immersion in an outdoor ice bath. Known as 'The Iceman,' Mr. Hof controls his body temperature by the tantric practice of tumo and is the only non-Tibetan in the world to have mastered this art.

Shedding all habits; good and bad

The entire purpose of our existence is to overcome our negative habits.
- Rabbi Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna (1720-1797)

I think that getting rid of my negative habits is learning, on a daily bases which habits serve me; which of these are ego/acts ways of being, which are positive or negative and then transform them! That means looking deep into the area of that which I don't know, I don't know. Yes, even the positive habits and really question their existence for me, often, even shedding the positive habits because they may be negative without my awareness that they are so. This was a very powerful insight for me, I thought, I am “a glass is half full kind of guy”, later; I learned that this optimistic way of being helped me, but it didn't transform me. The task is to empty the metaphorical cup completely, get rid of the cup, because even in doing so I am still not completely at nothing. The more I reach for nothing; the universe fills my cup up with something new and amazing like a vacuum filling air into a space. The metaphorical cup can't be at nothing, everything must be full, even the cup that is half full of water, must be half full with air. So my way of being or act was from the past, it was superficial, it was about “looking good”, now I get to this nothingness, now I have real transformation. Now I look deep into all my habits, and transform them, just to get good at transformation, that way, when real break downs occur or lesson presents itself, I can shed everything very fast and all at once, to allow a space for the possibility of everything and anything!