The Angel of Death

Recently I was hanging out with a few friends and the topic of death came up. We were told a story from one of our friends about a young mormon boy who he went to school with. He told us that the boy was a very happy kid and as polite as you could want. He was genuinely a good person and he was brought up in a way that made others value him because of the quality of his nature. One day during school a rumor started that a boy had died. Later they found out it was the boy. Everyone in the school dealt with a tragedy that day. Everyone could be found crying, sad, and consoling one another. Suddenly a reality hit them all that would forever change their lives. It was the idea that life ended, and sometimes, unexpectedly short.

During my biggest spiritual growth period I came up with a name for this called The Angel of Death. I know this is already a character of some sort but to me that is a great name for it. I find that during my life this angel comes and reminds me that life is important and short. It reminds me that my petty problems and stresses are shallow, and that I am living my life foolishly.

After the story a few of my friends began to express their distaste for the subject. It brought up emotions in them that were not desired for the moment. Personally though, I had dealt with a death of a loved one at an early age, thus the story touched me differently. I wasnt sure what to say so I mentioned the subject of The Angel of Death, which seemed to fall on deaf ears. I dont blame them, some of them had not dealt with death and truthfully it is a sad and difficult subject to broach.

I find that life brings us readjustments otherwise known as lessons. We are here to grow and learn about ourselves and death - being such a huge part of our lives - we will deal with it one day or another. I feel that losing your innocence is learning about the tragedy of our lives. We are born with a death sentence, and because of our identification with our lives and life itself we forget that we came from something before birth. Death is not the end just as birth was never the beginning. We blend seamlessly from one expression of god to another. God being the universe/existence we find ourselves a part of.

So I say let it touch you and teach you. Remember to be grateful for your life, but do not fear your death, fore this is less "real" than you realize.

Living the life youre given

I have not posted here in quite a while but I am excited to think about writing here again. 

I thought I might start on the topic of our lives. A small subject I know.. but one in need of some attention. 

Today in our large technologically enhanced world we run amok through the systems and have a sense of control over our lives. The jobs that we have ensure we feel a sense of security and even a sense of the future. "I know that tomorrow everything will be just fine, because I will be doing exactly what Ive been doing for the past 50 years." However this delightful feeling has a double edge. It is also the bane of our existence. We may not be able to put it into words but we feel trapped and limited by our need of security. It becomes isolating and it kills our spirit. I suspect this is partly what a mid-life crisis is all about. We finally learn that the way we thought was best, is the problem. 

I have had good fortune and through my own observations on how life works I expect good things are continually coming to me. I am forever being taught something about myself I had not known before, and my teachers come from all angles and when I least expect them. Through such experiences I have gained some clarity into the relationship that is my life and the larger movement of life around me. It seems that I am a mover and the moved. In the past decade I have experimented with both and Ive concluded that being moved is where real success lay. 

To say it simply we are here to live "gods" life. As we are connected to something larger, it stands that we have a purpose we may not fully grasp. Our desires and wishes are not as important as we may think and may only be new lessons which dont give us what we expect but give us what we need. The truth is that I like to think I have been in control of my life and have guided it, but if I look closer I find that I was actually given everything i have. The only decisions I have made were whether I went with the opportunity or not. How I viewed my life determined whether or not what I was receiving was worthy.

If we hold an intention in our minds then life will bring us opportunities, lessons you could say, on the path toward fulfilling that intention. The goal though is to know yourself deeper, not to receive a grand illusionary life filled with attachments and images, but to live a life. And what is life if not movement. To stagnate is to die. Depression and sadness are giving up, which has its place, because as we move and shake we also must be continually reborn. 

In conclusion I recommend you become aware of what life asks of you. Consider, if you will, that your life is a relationship between You and God. Replace God with whatever you want. You can Consciousness for instance. If you really ask where are we, why does this place exist, what is existence, where did it all start and will it ever end, you will find your way to this larger movement that has its own purpose. Start to see how your choices effect your life. Are you making this choice out of fear, desire, or do you see it as an opportunity even though it scares you. The goal again is self discovery, so anything we are afraid of is simply something we have yet to understand about ourselves. 

Give rather than take, and your reward is a joyous life.

Freedom

We live outside of the garden of eden because our minds are broken. We are humans, freed from the confines of an animalistic consciousness. We now live in a mindset which is at constant odds with itself. One side constantly seeking comfort, the other... freedom. How do we find who we really are between the two? The confusion blinds us and, if we are not careful, binds us to things we can see, never realizing that we should never bind ourselves as we are free. What we see, is never the big picture.

We are born to be free. We have the gift to break free. Nothing is too big, too overwhelming, too binding. We give in, give up, and glue together pieces of things that we can wrap our minds around then call the gluey result "me", never realizing it is merely an idea.

Where do we go? Who do we turn to? Which way is up? Where are we? Where am I? Who am I?

Do not use your environment as your compass, only as a sign. Do not use others as your compass, only as guides. You are already free. You are adrift in an infinite beautiful sea. You do not need shelter. You do not need fear. We choose these things to feel secure. But you do not need that either. You already have it without trying. When insecurity has convinced you that you need security, you are lost. When you let go, you are free.

Be like a bird on the wind, a fish in a current, a flame within fire, and a worm within dirt. Be Free.

The Grand Illusion

It turns out a few of my very old videos that I made are still online. For those of you who dont know I used to have a rather significant youtube channel and produced a few of my own videos with found materials. Heres one I recently found :D


Disclose.tv - The Grand Illusion... Video

I'm Addicted to Addiction, But I can quit when I want to...

Wait.. Werent we taught about addiction in school? The police officer came to my third grade class and showed us a bunch of drugs and we were told how bad they were. We were shown videos of signs of violent drug users. Told to keep an eye out for people who have fists while they walk. So we can glimpse a little at the addictive qualities certain chemicals have but we were never told why a person chooses this. Why is the truth so alluding?

An intriguing place to start is with the notion that people can become addicted to emotions. We sometimes forget we are made up of trillions of cells and view the world through chemicals.

Emotions can be viewed psychologically, spiritually, and an infinite array of perceptions. To view them as their chemical states seems to be a key to understanding our addiction to them. It seems true that a person may persist in one state of perception, causing particular emotions to exist, and thus a particular chemical to be produced. Over time a state of normality develops and we become more comfortable hanging around one set of chemicals than another. We develop a dependency on them.

With this in mind it starts to be quite easy to see why people become addicted to, well, anything. Someone may have an unending urge to play video games, read books, or talk. They all get a certain sense of themselves from doing so and chemicals are released and comfort develops. I personally dont think we are meant to live in one state for a long period of time. It seems to be quite damaging. "Everything in moderation" seems to apply even to something as immaterial as emotions even though we tend not to think of thoughts and emotions as things, but rather we see them as "I", when this is really not the case.

When people go through withdraw of a hard drug it can sometimes take weeks to overcome; a lot of time that is full of sweating and fighting an internal struggle of letting go. They used to use LSD to release people of such afflictions and the simple - heavy sessions therein would cure people of their addiction all together. High doses of LSD were given, the patient would then lay on the couch and would face the inner spaces of who they were and their relationship with reality. Supposedly they wouldn't need to go through the lengthy withdraw phase. This is because the user would have to face the aspects of themselves during their session; which were the root causes for their addiction.

After many years of study I still find it quite fascinating that all drugs mimic what is already in the human body. The drug could not work if the body did not already have the ability to use it. For instance THC from Marijuana forces the brain to produce an excess of normal happy chemicals thus making you "high". If you became very very happy without the drug you would feel the same way. I myself have been this happy and I did feel high and others asked me if I was. I was high on life.

I think if a balance in ones life is not attained, then, obviously, ones will naturally seeks ways to balance. In modern society it seems as if we do not know how to do that very well so we turn to sensations as a means to deliver us from what ails us. We in fact, more times than not, choose new ways to comfort ourselves. We cannot seem to put our finger on what ails us beyond comforts. I think ignorance is the culprit to this undeveloped mindset. We persistently deny the truth every time we choose comfort over the truth. "The truth hurts" is quite a famous and even cliche saying but if honestly considered, its undeniably true.

Buddha struggled with the notion of human suffering. It was in fact his life's work to find a solution to it. In the end enlightenment was the answer. This moment contains it all. If you learn to see suffering for what it is, and let it be as it must, then you have an opportunity to use it for what its meant for rather than let it use you until you become sick from trying to look away. We are far more responsible for our addictions than we like to think and until we learn to mature properly we will always live in immature attachment.

Healing the Preemptive Strike

A few years ago there was a lot of talk on the news about "preemptive strikes". These referred to war, and more specifically, striking the enemy before they strike you. I used to get sick a lot more than I do these days. From the food I eat, to the exercise I get, to the healthy mentality I cultivate, my health requires my undying attention and intrigue.

I remember, a few years ago now, getting the flu right around Christmas. I remember eating soup for weeks and weeks but I was still sick. A lot later I realized that I had not been feeding my body anything good to help heal itself. The soup I had been eating had a few good veggies in it and even meat but it was mostly broth, otherwise I wasn't really giving my body much to work with. At the same time my mental state was one of self-conscious depression. Not only for having to be sick, but also for having been layed off recently and attempting to start my freelance career. Its times like these that ignorance becomes clear. My limitations at that point made me ill and I did not have the wisdom to heal myself well, nor prevent the illness from taking over my body completely.

This can be a touchy subject because I find most people don't feel responsible for their sickness. They blame the flu or whatever is ailing them as the culprit. As if the virus itself is going around making people sick without their having anything to do with it. If this were the case then everyone would be sick and the human race would most likely have died off a very long time ago. Our bodies always contain virus's but they must wait until the immune system lets them in. I think this is a system we don't fully understand. Doctors have a great understanding of it but even some of them suffer the same delusions of responsibility as everyone else. The energy we put in our body (food), the energy our body participates in (internal and external environment, thoughts and relationships), and the energy we express (exercise, creativity, love), all help to serve our balance and well being as bodies of energy. This is not a spiritual thought mind you, though it does serve that also, I mean this all quite literally and scientifically. We are intimately responsible for our bodies but its something we need to learn about. Going to the doctor can be helpful but people don't typically attempt to understand it themselves. They would rather "leave it to the professionals". Which is like saying “I don't want to deal with what I do with my money, Ill go to a banker to tell me what I do with it”. Its a broken way of living.

A year later the onset of sickness was here again. I remember the stress of the time and yet I did not stop to rest. I kept pushing myself until I became sick. I realized I had done this so I switched my mentality from one of ambition to one of nurturing. I decided to nurture my body because I love my body. This switch in mentality vastly improved my situation. I did not look at the sickness as something to loath or hate, but as a sign of being out of balance. Its a very clear signal that people tend to treat like a neuscense. You can look at the stop light as if it is telling you that you need to slow down and come to a stop because you are in danger, or you can look at it as if its slowing you down and getting in your way. I fed my body great food; fruit, veggies, water, garlic, onions, etc. All sorts of good healing foods so my body had a healthy supply of nutrients and water to move them around with. My mentality was nurturing which felt like I was mothering myself. It felt like love and it felt right. I was happy and I rested. I slept, and made peace. And I was over my sickness before it really started.

It is true that doctors call cancer the "martyrs disease". A martyr, by definition, is someone who suffers. They take in the pain and they hold it which causes internal suffering. This is the first clear sign of a dis-ease. Having had a step father who past away when I was 12 from cancer, I had many years to ponder the truth of this idea. And true it is. Roy was a great man but he lived with much internal stress and pain. He slaved away for a boss who always paid him late, he made due with what little we had, he had a divorced wife and a daughter he could only see on rare occasions, a father he never really got to know, and friends who's lives were full of negativity, struggle and sickness. Roy had leukemia for 3 or 4 years but, in the end, died of a heart attack. He simply could not keep up the fight with his own dis-ease, no matter how large a heart he had. Like an mental pain, dis-ease starts as a seed and takes over the whole system. In the end the host believes without a shadow of doubt that they are the dis-ease, and there is no way to beat it. They believe this so much in fact that they believe the only way to overcome this painful position is to fight.

This is like fighting fire with fire. Its like fear handing you a sword to fight with, and you fight, never realizing you fight because you are afraid. Fear completely tricked you because you had no idea who YOU really were.

We live in a society that is disconnected. Our spirit does not feel connected to reality. I would blame scientific thinking for this completely but I think its too simple to do that, however true it may be, there are far too many other things to help this also. I think we live in a society that caters to distracting ones self from their connection to reality. We are raised ignorantly and continue to nurture our own ignorance of who and what we are. We let others convince us of false ideas and migrate to unhealthy ways of thinking of ourselves and the world. Instead of seeing ourselves as reality, connected completely as energy to all energy we relate with and trying to see that we in fact are not bound to skin and bone but are in fact infinite. Instead we reinforce the idea that we are separate, that we do not believe in "god", that we are machine like. We forget truths that were discovered by our ancestors and passed down through the generations simply because we feel we are smarter than them. We discount their ideas because we are told they are simpletons who believe in mythology and magic.

I read recently that multitasking makes people stupider. They cannot focus on one thing at a time anymore yet somehow we convince ourselves that we are very good at doing more than one thing at a time. When in fact we cannot do either thing particularly well. So maybe this is the challenge of the future. We are destined to face sickness, death, pain, suffering, and all the other negative aspects of a detached self until we learn our lesson. This does not just apply to us as a whole, but individually as well. Though this is true it does not have to be true in a larger sense. If we begin to learn from the small pains, and sickness's, and suffering, then they do not need to grow into a full blow organism. If we do not do the work however, then we will, through ignorance, end up nurturing one dis-ease or another, until it grows big and strong.

Nowadays I practice preemptive strikes however I don't fight the pain. I accept it as my own. I realize "yes, i feel stress in my chest and I can see that i feel it when I think about money that I owe, or the person who bothers me, or the thing I need to do next week. I can see now that I am out of balance and I remember that I am one with god, right now, in this moment. Although money, people, and possibilities exist, are real, and are in my life, they does not govern my well being if I don't let them. Debt is temporary, money is temporary, people and life are temporary, I will die, so fearing any of it is silly and only serves to hurt my body and life. I am safe and free." These are the types of revelations I attempt to make. When I feel pain, sickness, and depression, I try to wake up to the truth and let go, rather than hold on. I don't throw on the TV and go to sleep more. I accept these conditions as signs. Remember who I really am, and move through the suffering.

Balance is key to a healthy life. Its an eastern idea that seems to be penetrating the western mindset slowly. I like to remember a simple easter pearl of wisdom: "When I am hungry, I eat. When I am thirsty, I drink. When I am tired, I sleep. When I feel like dancing, I dance."

As far as I know, all of our bodies die of something or another. A long life has much to give and teach, I hope all the best to you and yours.

Too blind to see God

After watching a short interview with Richard Dawkins and Ben Stein talk about God I began to think on this subject again. How can a scientist, someone who is identified with the rigger and mechanical thinking of science, ever truly see God? There are ways that could make it possible but this is not an intellectual exercise. In fact it has nothing to do with the intellect. It seems that, as is anyone trying to understand something they are closed minded to, they are identified with a certain way of thinking and anything beyond this thinking is literally beyond them. Richard Dawkins is well known for trying to put down ideas of God and I find it amazing because he makes no effort to really relate to ideas presented. He resists this thinking the whole time. So instead of letting bygons be bygons he is actually uncomfortable with his lack of knowledge within himself and attempts to reinforce his own way of thinking.

So how does a Scientist begin to see God? I think its like seeing the forest for the trees. The truth is that there are many scientists that believe in God. And not a god that is some white dude in the sky that created us and filters his prayer emails. God as reality, existence.

You are introduced to new parts of yourself through your life and thus the relationship between you and yourself develops. This is also quite psychological. When you are faced, internally or externally, with that new part of yourself you either resist it or you have a relationship with it and it within yourself. I think this is hard to grasp because we lack confidence in being open to all ideas and truths, we tend to gravitate to one identification of self or another, making any openness foggy if not completely closed. This happens because we are fearful, because we feel separate from reality, as if we are on the outside looking in. And in that case you would be. When you have experienced that relationship, you may look inward. Then all outward experiences are also internal ones.

It seems to be that people just have problems with ideas. Even now as I write this, it is my way of working out my issues with ideas. I see god in a way that I see God. Its infinite, expansive, omnipotent, conscious, and loving. Someone else will see God as a being to worship and to fear, and others will imagine many other forms. This does not make any of them false. Scientists like to believe they have the truth. But truth is relative. Facts are not. The fact is you cannot discount one mans internal truth over another without limiting your own potential to discover something new within your internal experience of reality. I think scientists like Dawkins are actually evangelical scientists. They believe there is no other truth but science truth. That there is no better way to exist in society than as a scientifically minded person. Personally I think its extremely important and normal to live spiritually. Its the way its been done since humans could think. Spirituality to me means we cultivate the ability to relate to reality as life, which it is. As we move into the future in this scientific society/environment our minds are changing. Science is helping people to disconnect from life and thus everyone is beginning to feel broken and lost. Depression is at an all time high. Take back what was already yours.

I feel that if the only reality you are willing to accept is one that you can repeat in a lab then Im afraid you are too uptight about life. I met a woman the other day who insisted imagined thoughts were not real. This is the same line of ignorant thinking. She needs to limit what she can accept as real and true in order to feel secure and comfortable in reality. If those thoughts werent real, then how can they exist?