Wha' You Lookin' at?

If you could take a weekend and look at everything that means anything to you…what do you think you’d find? Do you think you’d learn who you truly are? Would you listen to that inner doubting voice that tells you to let the world dictate your experience? Or would you try and find your peace? Would you let other people define who you are? Or would you discover for yourself? If I could tell you the answer to these questions…people would be lining up in droves, throwing Benjamins my way, while waiting for some magical answer to the problems that keep plaguing all of our lives.

I am a writer, and in being a writer; I thoughtfully and methodically pour over words for months, even years sculpturing fantasies for my readers. I pray for the slight chance that I’ve created a world that they can’t wait to escape into. However; making readers fall in love with characters that only exist in my head produces a very delicate vulnerability within me.

I’ll be the first to admit, as I let the hammer of insecurity slam against the thin bones of my self-doubt, I can feel them begin to shatter in the moments of real desperation as I dance on the thin line of who I think I should be and who I truly am.

When did I, as a writer, decide to pander to the dispassionate and unbelievers? Was it the instant I decided to believe in a reality that exists only outside of myself? 

I totally get it….I totally understand you wanna get yours, just as I wanna get mine. But if getting mine inhibits you from getting yours; would the empty trophies of triumph I collect really be worth it? Or would the sting of words, not meant to be uttered, taint the well of harmony within the writing community I so dearly love?

If I’d only take a splinter of time to recognize the grandeur of moments shared between a smile and a look…even the words I’ve shared across a table…maybe, just maybe my life would be different. Is it fair of me to take the life changing moment from someone simply because they don’t understand what I do? Is it inconsequential to share that sacred place within me as I peel back the scars from words so thoughtlessly thrown against my thin skin? Maybe.

But what if…just what if, I took all those moments of weakness, and the vulnerable split second decisions that thunder so violently through my thoughts and shift the burden of misunderstanding to the weight of having faith in something greater?

It isn’t the thoughts that sail in and out of my intellect that power my experience, it’s the ones that decided to set up neighborhoods in my mind that begin to take hold and shape my life.

I think it is time to become aware of my thinking, because what I think becomes what I experience (no matter what). So maybe it’s time to check out what neighborhoods I keep building and rebuilding in my mind.

Thanks for hanging out and reading my ramblings! 

Give back....Pay it forward....help someone discover their true power. Be a listener, and talk when inspiration speaks to you! 

 

Don't be Limited by Conditional Thinking!

First off let me apologize for being pretty much nonexistent on the blog for the last month. I’ve been taking a class about Ralph Waldo Emerson, Judge Thomas Troward, Dr. Ernest Holmes and Emma Curtis Hopkins that really has stretched and pulled at my spirituality as well as my intellect. It made me really grow in ways that I never knew I could! Yeah, I’ve learned so much more that I get to pour in this blog and some really great ideas I can’t wait to talk about! But let’s get onto the topic I thought was important today…getting caught up in the nets of conditional thinking.

How often do we get caught up in the drag-nets of race consciousness? How many times a day are we affected by other people’s moods? We all have days where we are going along; having a great day until… someone’s bad attitude decides to show up. We could be singing along with the greatest songs that move us to shiver inside, but the minute someone enters our mental space—all the power goes out and we are left sitting in the pitch dark waiting for someone else to turn on the lights of flip on the power breaker. Why is that? Why do we allow other’s follies, moods, shortcomings, or otherwise affect us? It’s because we haven’t learned how to be of the world but not part of it. Now wait a minute…what the heck does that mean? Simply put, it means as we grow in our spiritual consciousness, we begin to learn that conditional thinking of people around us is nothing more than chatter for the fishes. When we learn to let go of other’s negative energy and replace it with love, we inherent the ability to let what others say, just roll off our backs.

You all are familiar with the statement, “It is done unto you as you believe.” If you don’t know that statement, stick around, I tend to state it…a lot.

See, if we are going to live with a conditioned consciousness, our lives we be conditional. We will be affected by the going-ons around us. When it rains we will find fault with nature, when we get in the car, we’ll be pissed at other drivers, when we interact with people, we will experience them in limiting ways. When we decide to be in the world, we will find that every interaction we have with anything can be affected by our negative or limiting ideas. Let’s remember the quote from Einstein, “You can’t fix a problem with the same consciousness that created it.” See we can’t become at peace if we are running around pissed off at people. We can’t be happy if we allow other people to define who we are. We can’t really have prosperity if we keep telling everyone we don’t have any money! 

Thoughts are things. We know this—we know it because we experience the outcome our thoughts all the time. We even claim it, when we say, “I knew that was going to happen.” How many times do we keep chanting a future event we are afraid is going to occur…only to see it happen? “God, I hope I don’t lose my job.” Oh, man, I have a bad feeling about this.” We are ALWAYS claiming our experience. ALWAYS! What we think about today becomes our experiences tomorrow. So why are we mucking it up with limited beliefs or conditional thinking.

Remember, I’ve stated this before…don’t be bound by precedence! Don’t think that just because it’s never happened that it can’t. We have hundreds upon thousands of examples where society wasn’t bound by what was conceivable. If that were the case, women would still be dragged around by their hair and men would still be chasing around mammoths with spears. Just look around and you will see where we have effortlessly leapt over the idea of being bound by precedence; where conditional thinking has crumbed to our evolutionary thoughts. From the discovery of electricity to the invention of the personal computer we haven’t let race consciousness, or the collected thoughts of people, limit us to what has always been.

We as a species have volition, freedom of ideas, thought, and intuition; that’s what keeps us in a forward motion, in a movement towards greater understanding of the power within us. We have a power within us that gives us the capability to move mountains and the only thing stopping us is our idea that we are limited in our abilities to do so. We become conditioned to what has happed as the only truth, whereas, if we truly looked at it, it is nothing more a link to our past. We must live on the highest point of discovery, willing and ready to take a faith-filled leap out into the vastness of our future. Be ready to accept the multitude of greatness coming your way, be willing and open to the harmony and peace permeating your every experience, and be able to see the overflowing abundance of Love in your life, right now! Spend your day in gratitude and forgiveness. See the Love within everyone…and I mean everyone around you.

When we let go of other people’s ideas and form our own thoughts filled with Peace, Love, Harmony, Abundance, and Joy…the world around us changes to what we expect it to be!

Thanks for hanging out and reading my ramblings~

Right Now...Matters.

Do you ever look back at your life and break out in the sweats? You look back at choices you’ve made with your kids, and know you’ve F’d up somewhere? How many times have you woke up at 3am and evaluated your life; letting it replay over and over in your mind like a really bad song you can’t get out of your head?

For some reason, I have this cycle in my life where every couple of weeks I wake up at 3am in a total panic and I keep running over and over in my head scenarios of where I’ve totally screwed up as a parent; thoughts of “If I only” or “Why didn’t I?” Then, I start to worry about the future. Oh, man, don’t get me started about the future.

See, we all believe that we want to do a better job than our parents, and yet, in the back of our minds we keep questioning our outcomes. Should I have done it differently? I should have done this or I should have done that. We should ourselves right out of living in the moment. We keep looking back at what we did, and stress out on something we have no power to change.

Let’s face it, right here and right now…We will never be able to change the past. So why do we try? The only thing we have any control over is this exact moment right now. We keep basing our future on what we experienced in the past, and you know what? It never works because life is subjective. Nobody looks at any given situation the same way. I don’t care what anyone says, we could have a room full of people and something occurs—nobody will tell the same exact story. That’s because we all have our own history stamped and embedded in our minds. It’s the past experiences we cling to so we can draw some form of conclusion for our current state of affairs. We feel the only way to validate our current situation is by comparing it to what has already happened. The problem with that is then we are letting our past dictate our future.

There is absolutely nothing we can do to change the past, so it’s time to stop living in it. What if I said, who cares what we did yesterday, today is a new day? Because guess what? Today, right now, is the first moment of the rest of our lives…What we do right now, is the only thing that truly matters. The past is over, the future isn’t here; it is right now, the present, which we need to see as our gift.

We must stop beating ourselves up for choices we made with our old consciousness and start cheering for the choices we are making with our new consciousness! Right now, we have the choice to live from this moment forward, or keep, hitting the ball and dragging George. It doesn’t do us any good to drag along our past mistakes or doubts. It won’t create the future we want. We want a better future? We must start with living in the NOW, today. Learn from our past but stop inviting it to come along for the ride. Stop letting what we did years ago define who we are today. We are completely different people now.

Thoughts we think today, create the patterns of tomorrow. Think about it, what we focus on today creates our tomorrow. So what are we focusing on; more dread, anger, frustration, and our mistakes? Do we really want that to be who we are and what we bring to the table of our future? Take today each moment at a time. Feel what it’s like to breathe in the only breath of Right Now. Feel what it’s like to be completely present, in the moment. It is the most empowering thing we can do.

Here we go, today, take a moment to talk to someone you’ve never met. Smile at a stranger, hug your children a couple seconds longer, take a moment to stop and really listen to what your loved ones are saying. Be proud of who you are, and what you’ve become. Take this moment, right now, to live the life you’ve dreamed of having. Dare to make right now, the most important moment of your life.

Thanks for hanging out and reading my ramblings.

Picture taken when my son hiked the back country of Yosemite-Aug. 2012

Maybe Someone's Listening...

Waking up at 3 in the morning in a cold sweat on a freezing morning because suddenly the thought of inadequacy, lack, and fear has grabbed hold of my mind really sucks. The idea that every moment is an opportunity to change my thinking while clutching a jagged rock that seems to be crumbling under the subconscious rhetoric filling my head that my faith isn’t enough. Yeah, it’s January.

Why is it, that around this same time every year, I look at the accomplishments of the 12 calendar months prior to this moment and question if what I have now is any better than what I had then? It’s always this point in time that I question if my needs and wants were fulfilled in 2012. And every time I look back at what was I can say is…Absolutely. If I’m expecting the same experience, without changing roller coasters, guess what? I’m going to go on the same ride each time. Sure I can sit in different seats, but the rails my car is riding on is still doing the same dead man’s drop, loop de loop and corkscrew.

So why is it that regret, fear, and self-judgment seem to overcome me at 3 in the morning? Could it be that when I lay myself down to sleep, and slumber in peace, that those unsound, ominous, beastly fears I’ve stuffed way down deep within the dark corners of my undisturbed mind claw their way into the forefront of my thoughts to test me on just how much of a handle I truly have on my life?

When those sleepless minutes hijack the hours of relaxation is there any way to push past the mirage of bullshit my mind decided to create without my permission?

Yeah, well, at least I’m not alone…There are millions of people who raise their heads from the month of December, take a deep breath, and just hope the fan doesn’t stop spinning because of all the shit that’s hit its blades. Why do I live this way? Why do I fall into the impersonal(ness) of resolutions and plant wishes, only to forget to water them? 

How can I better myself when I’m not ready to do the work? How do I decide to stand in line for a new ride?

Life doesn’t have to be so bleak. I don’t have to lose myself in what I thought I wanted to be. There is no shame in looking back and sliding my forearm across my dampened brow because I made it through another year.

Every morning I wake up to another day with a chance. I am given a new opportunity with the rise of the sun and the setting of the moon. My true freedom comes when I don’t squander my life living in guilt, fear, lack, or pain.

I was created in Peace, born in Love, conceived in Joy, reared in Happiness, and given the Abundance of the Universe. It is my birthright to embody these qualities. However, throughout the years of growing up I’ve let the world dictate how I was supposed to live. Now I must weed the garden of my mind, pluck the weeds of inadequacy, lack, pain, and fear and plant the seeds of Love. Dig holes in the rich soil of my thoughts and plant the bulbs of Prosperity, Happiness, and Peace. It is time I taste each moment given to me without preconceived ideas that it’s gonna be carnival food instead of a gourmet meal.

You know what I find helps me work through the hiccups of negative moments? I read (non-fiction). I take my books that encourage me, enlighten me, and envelope my soul with positive thinking and I read them. I highlight lessons; I scribble words in the margins, and paste post-its or dog-ear the pages I need to go back and re-read. I do what it takes to eradicate the negative thought from my mind.

There is NOTHING more powerful than a made up mind. There is nothing more powerful than the thoughts I put out into the Universe. NOTHING is more powerful than the moment I create an idea in my mind. I can tell you, before my feet even hit the floor I can feel what kind of day I am going to have. If I listen close enough, there is this immutable power within me that does exactly what I think into it. It is time to unbuckle from the roller coaster I’ve been on and choose another ride; one where I don’t know about the corkscrew ahead or the huge loop de loop.

It’s time I give up all the fears of inadequacy, lack, and disharmony. It is time to plant what I want to grow in my garden of life, take a ride on a roller coaster I’ve never been on, and surrender to the idea that the Universe will always supply everything I’ll ever need. I just need to listen and remember to buckle up for the ride, because it’s truly is wonderful when I can live my life immersed in Love, Joy, Peace, Abundance, and Harmony.

Thanks for hanging out and reading my ramblings.