What does it offer?

It offers an outlet for my unresolved energies; for my confusions, and my frustrations.  It allows me to wrestle with them.  To transmute and distill swirling passions and emotions into crystallized thought.  What do I really think?

Writing allows me to put these passions to paper and see the thoughts that pass through my mind with my own eyes.  To judge them – as truly some of the only things I can rightfully judge.  Seeing my thought, which was virtual, take physical form gives it a solidity and a reality that forces me to take account.  Does this thought truly represent who I am?  Who I want to be?

And as I judge I refine.  And I refine.  And I refine until all that is left is Truth.

And Peace.

There are many ways to see.

I can live as if my awareness is all there is – my experiencing my life is all there is.

I can choose to expand my consciousness to include those around me.  When I experience my life I can include my Mother, my Father, and my Siblings in my consciousness.  I can include my community in my consciousnesses.  I can include my immediate natural world.

In this expanded consciousness, it is no longer only about me.  My experience is not all there is because I am cognizant that life is expressing itself around me.  Beings are affected by my actions and act independently of me.  There is health and there is sickness.  There are terrible hardships and incredible successes.  This means that I might not think only of myself when I act and I have the context of others’ experiences and actions in interpreting and inspiring my own.

Once I include my family or my community or my immediate natural world in my consciousness, they are not necessarily there permanently or constantly.  In a moment I can revert to think only of my own existence.  I can lose myself in emotion.  Humans are passionate beings!  When I allow these passions to reign, I can cause myself unnecessary suffering.  I can also do and say things that I regret.

I can also expand my consciousness wider than just my immediate environment.  I think it is natural to think only in the context of our human lives.  Why would I think outside the confines of my life and my experience?  How is that even possible?  In the beginning of humanity, we can imagine how these questions might have some validity.  Without language, how might I experience anything outside of my immediate experiences and immediate environment?  It would be much more difficult!

With language, though, we can communicate and share experiences.  We can orally pass down and accumulate knowledge from generation to generation, expanding our consciousness to include those who preceded us.

We have created technologies that allow humans to expand this exponentially further.  Specifically the technologies of pen and paper and any subsequent technologies of recording and storing information.  These technologies allow us to store the human experience.  They allow us to build and accumulate our understanding in all areas.  Without these technologies, it would have been impossible to have made the material advances we have made over the course of human existence on Earth.

Very recently, the internet has allowed this historical record as well as real-time additions to it to be accessed instantly most places in the world.  We can instantly learn about the infiniteness of the Universe.  We can learn about the age of the Earth.  We can learn about the age of humanity.

Well, not everyone can.  And those of us who can can learn about those that can’t.  We can learn about the inequalities that exist in the world and that have existed throughout history.  We can learn about the history of humanity’s potentiality for supreme beauty and terrible atrocity.

We can conversely also use these tools so as to keep our own experience under microscopic and vigilant awareness.

So, there is a range of consciousness.  It can shrink or expand.  And its ability to both shrink and expand has been exponentially increased by human technologies.  Why would I shrink or expand it?

As I shrink my consciousness, I again become completely absorbed in my experience.  My experiencing my experience is all there is.  In this state, every emotion becomes consuming.  I am selfish.  I am all that matters.  Over and above the hopefully evident deficiencies of this way of experiencing life, in such a state I am highly unlikely to be able to have successful relationships with others and to be successful in my endeavors because every negative emotion equates to the destruction of my entire experience!  Even the smallest setbacks or slights are all-consuming.

As I grow my consciousness, my own personal experience becomes smaller and smaller.  Over 7 billion people are currently experiencing life with me.  Many of them are right now victims of unspeakable atrocities.  The human experience is hundreds of thousands of years old.  My 80 or 100 years of life is but a speck of dust on a speck of dust of the life of the Earth.  Millions of different species have walked the Earth over its history of billions of years.  The Earth is nothing to the infiniteness of the Universe.  With this expanded consciousness, my own personal emotions are so small they barely even exist.  I am aware of all that is around me and all that has come before me and that might come after.  I am aware of how I am connected to everything and everyone around me.  In such a state, I am highly likely to be able to respond to life with perspective.  In my relationships, I can respond to slights with compassion.  In my endeavors, I can take failures on the chin and respond with resolve and gratitude knowing the trials of others in the world and those that have come before me.

* * *

Now, I must make a personal confession.  I believe that I have an obligation to expand my consciousness.  To use the magical technologies I have available to me to think outside of my immediate experiences.  To read and to learn.

When I face troubles I ask myself: how can I complain?  Who am I to complain?  How are my troubles unique?  Slavery and genocide and concentration camps exist today.  I think it is an affront and an insult to people in these situations to complain about my life.

I don’t even have to look to people in these situations to have these thoughts.  Every single person has their own difficulties to deal with – how selfish am I to think that mine are so special?  And forgetting others, is it even logical to complain about my puny existence in the context of the vastness of the Universe?  Not in the slightest, my Soul!

I think maybe you can sense my passion on the subject.

But then, my passion and my emotions are nothing.

I continue on my mission at peace.

O, Reflection!  Our greatest of tools!

The ability to step back and process our experiences.

The spontaneous insights intuited when you have the space.

Genius flowing from the Source.

Be your fullest expression!

Why would you hold back?  For whom?

One day you will face Death and you will look back on a Life where you held back, where you could have been more – but weren’t.

Will the comfort have been worth it?  Will it have been worth it to simply fit in with those around you?  To have not caused a stir or unsettled others?

To have slept those extra hours?  To have delayed?  To have stayed safe in hiding from your fears and insecurities?

Do not fear your greatness.  Do not get lost in the self-defeating stories you tell yourself.

Are the troubles you face so difficult?  Are they really so insurmountable?  Have others not conquered much taller tasks?  Don’t they still every day?  Why should you not do the same?

Your fears are senseless.  Your life is but a speck of dust on a speck of dust.  Earth has been here for four and a half billion years.  What is your life in view of that?  How big are your fears in view of that?

See them for what they are.  Your entire existence will be forgotten in a century.

Unless it isn’t.

Remember, Death is coming.  Memento Mori.

• It is a way of being.
• It is not found in another.
• It is unconditional.  If there are conditions to it, then it is not it.
• It does not end.  If it ends, it was never it.
• It is limitless.
• It does not judge.
• It is open.
• It is forgiveness.
• It heals everything.
• It is surrender.
• It has no fear.
• It is free of attachment.
• It creates space for others.
• It is compassionate.
• It is truth.
• It is kindness.
• It is joy.
• It is playful.
• It is the strongest force.

It is Love.

He stopped, wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, and looked back at her.  “You alright?” he asked her.  She stalked towards him, eyes looking down to step over or around the roots stretched over the forest path.  Both her hands grasped the straps of her pack and pressed against her chest.

“Yeah,” she replied as she approached him and joined him in stopping their hike, a little out of breath.  The sun peaking through the tree canopy above made the sweat on her forehead sparkle.  He walked behind her, unzipped the pack, grabbed the water bottle and handed it over to her.  “Thanks.”

He looked around the old forest.  “Beautiful,” he said in legitimate awe.  He looked ahead up the path and could see the clearing that they were aiming for was about a kilometer off.  “Let’s go?”

“Hold on,” she replied softly, “let’s just hang out for a sec.”

“Is the pack heavy?”

“A little.”

“Here,” he said as he took the weight of the pack off her shoulders and slung it on to his, “I’ll take it.”

“Thank you,” she said as she sat on a nearby stump.

He followed her cue, dropped the pack to the floor and leaned back against an adjacent tree.  He looked around at the forest again.  He took a deep breath through his nose to take in the fresh smell so different from the city.  He stood in the silence broken only every few minutes by the call of a nearby bird.  He dropped his hands down behind him and felt for the bark of the tree and then turned around and placed both his hands in front of him on it while he studied it with a curious and soft gaze.  He looked up to the top of the tree and then to the tops of the other trees around him.  “Amazing…”

“So, I saw your Bible.  I didn’t know you were Catholic?”

“I’m not, really,” he responded.  He knew that she was.  He knew of and had great respect for her studies and knowledge of not only Catholicism, but most religions.  “I like autobiographies and biographies.  Jesus seems to me a man worth reading about.”

She smiled at him.

“What’s your favorite book of the Gospel?” he asked her, eager to hear what he should read next.

She got up from the log, seemingly much lighter and full of energy from the loss of the pack.  “Let me know when you get to Romans.”

“Romans,” he repeated to himself, making a mental note.  She walked ahead of him up the trail towards the clearing ahead and he followed behind.

***

They sat beside each other on a large rock on the shore of the lake in the middle of the massive clearing.  He looked back behind him to the forest and then back at the serene, still water.  The mountains and clear sky above reflected in the light blue water.  This was different.  In the presence of this lake and these mountains, a calm pervaded him.  Pervaded everything.  His being became still as the water and strong and immovable as the mountain.  His mind was empty just because he was there.  There was no trying.  They sat there together for a long time before either of them said a word.

“What do you think of the judgement and the wrath of the Christian conception of God?  Do you think it’s a little much?” she asked him.  She was happy for the opportunity to sound off some of her doubts and questions she often kept inside while studying on searching for the answers.  On this rock, by this lake and these mountains she felt secure in her insecurities.

“Well…” he began, chin resting against his hand looking across the water.  He took a moment to collect and arrange his thoughts.  “Well…”

“To me, as it stands, I don’t see God as personal,” he started.  “So when I think of the wrath and the judgement of God towards ‘sinners’, I don’t think of God above us or around us, or wherever God may be, personally doling out judgement and wrath.”

“To me, God is everywhere, God is in everything,” he continued in the midst of beautiful natural affirmation of his current feeling in the scene around him.  “I think that this ‘God’ could be expressed in so many ways.  Maybe it is a certain scientific compound that is in everything, or a certain mathematical law, or some sort of energy or vibration, or it’s Love, or it’s Nature, or maybe it’s more like the traditional God who is in everything.  But anyway, I think that there are ways to live and be in harmony with God and also ways to live and be out of harmony with God.  Feel free to substitute the word God for any of the listed expressions or one of your own.”

“Yep,” she said in both understanding but also a signal to him that she was not so closed off in her Catholicism to dismiss or be offended by his ideas.

“I think that deep down in us, beneath the Ego, it really is only God,” he stated.

“I think that everyone can access that place, but even if we’re not quite there, it serves as a little voice inside of us that tells us when we are acting in or out of harmony with God.  The results of this acting (in this case) out of harmony with God are, to me, ‘God’s judgement and wrath’.

“And I think we witness this every day; when we act out of hatred, we get violence and war and suffering and death.  That’s God’s judgement and wrath.  Or when we act out of greed in our exploitation of the planet by destroying the environment, we get global warming and droughts and extinctions and tsunamis and different kinds of plagues.  Or when we act out of lust, we get emotional suffering and heartbreak.  And on and on.  That’s God’s judgement and wrath.”

All the while he spoke he was gazing towards the lake and the mountains.  As he finished, he looked over to her and her head moved quickly from gazing towards him and to the lake and the mountains.  He looked at her for a moment then looked back out, mind blank.

“So why don’t you use a smart phone?” she asked.

“It’s not for me,” he replied, looking across the table.  He saw the confused but intrigued eyes that looked back at him as a cue to continue.  “I like to be here.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, looking down quickly to her own smart device that had just flashed sitting on the table in front of her.  She then quickly looked back up at him and turned her phone over to face down on the table.

“Don’t worry about it,” he chuckled with compassion and sincerity.  “I just mean that when I’m with someone, or with a space, or where ever I am, I like to be completely there.  With that person, with that space.”

“Hm…” she responded, noticeably making an effort to maintain eye-contact and attention.  The gesture was appreciated.

“Do you know what I mean?  Do you see it around you?  With your friends?  I feel that the way we use these devices just takes us away from each other, from the moment,” he tried to explain.  His passion was beginning to well up inside of him, “I hang out with my friends now and everyone is off into a million different places.  We used to be there with each other, laughing, talking, and playing.  Now instead we are checking this sports score, or this piece of news, or this picture on social media, dividing our being into all these different channels to the point where we are really no where at all, almost as ghosts.”

“Interesting…” she responded.  “Can I see that?” she asked reaching across the table.  The man grabbed his flip phone off of the table and passed it over to her.  She flipped it open, quickly looked it over, flipped it back shut and reached over the table to pass it back.  As the man took it back she asked, “How do you text with that thing?”

“I don’t usually text,” he replied.  She looked back at him with the same intrigue, but now the hint of confusion replaced with one of solidity and fullness of being.  He again recognized the cue to continue, but aware that he let his passion take hold last time around, he resolved to remain at peace.

It was a conversation that always played out in his head and that he often initiated and re-initiated with many people; how to reconcile absolute truth, right-living, concepts of good and bad, healthy and unhealthy with individual truths and freedom- that the shoe that fits one pinches the other.  This inner dialogue meant he sometimes became passionate about his concepts of good and bad but had thus far been reverting always back to quietly living his own truth though admittedly wondering whether his resulting silence on issues of particular meaning to him really was for the greater good.

In any case, he made sure to attempt to make no offence and to express his opinion as one that was applicable solely to him, “I just don’t like the text message as a medium of communication,” he began.  “I find it cumbersome.  For me, it’s much easier to leave where I currently am for a couple of minutes, make a phone call, be fully there with that person for as long as we need to talk, and then come back to where I was.  I find that for me, text messages are just infinite streams taking me off the river.  What could be done in a minute phone call often takes a fifteen minute long text message conversation distracting me from what I’m doing.”

“And, for me personally, things that are said over text message would often never be said in person or over the phone.  Actions in lust or greed or other forms of vice were often initiated by me or towards me through text message where they never would have arose in person or by phone call.  Text messages have definitely caused myself and others that I’ve been involved with a lot of suffering.”

“I see… that’s interesting,” she repeated.

“I don’t know, that’s just me,” he reiterated.  “I just find it so crazy that everyone has one now.  That everyone has deemed them necessary.  In ten years it has become a necessity for everyone to have these thousand dollar products and their accompanying $100/month expenses and no one has really even batted an eye over how their use has developed or the implications that their use has had in our relationships with others, our world, or ourselves.  It’s crazy.  And what about ‘phone etiquette’?  I find that this really isn’t even a conversation; all of a sudden it just became socially acceptable to ignore the people around you and retreat into your phone to speak to someone else or pursue a whim of curiosity or emptiness that – suddenly – we cannot keep at bay.  We need answers to our questions or something to fill our void of loneliness, and we need them now.  It’s as if we forgot that we functioned perfectly fine since the beginning of humanity while having to wait till we got home to our computer, or to a library, or to a man of knowledge, or when there was no answer available to us at all.”

“And it’s not that I don’t see the magic in them.  They are extraordinary devices, they just aren’t for me,” he concluded.  It felt good for him to get that all out of his system.  He realized then that although people often made superficial teasing comments about his telephone choice, they rarely asked him why.  He switched the cross in his legs and sat with the woman in silence, both staring unfixed off in their own directions, absorbing the reaction that had just occurred between them.

“Why do you use a smartphone?”

The title of this post is a phrase often repeated by spiritual teacher, Ram Dass.  I have found its truth on so many levels.

I care a lot about people.  I really, really wish for everyone to be happy and to be healthy.  I also think about people a lot and the great and different ways they live and the things that I can learn from them.  When others are happy, I am also happy and feel that happiness with them.

Conversely, when people are unhappy, I feel that unhappiness.  I think that as is often the case with unhappiness and unhealthiness, there is many times a fog that clouds that person’s awareness, not allowing them to see the sources of their unhappiness or unhealthiness, or that they are even unhappy or unhealthy at all.  Because of that, it can be much easier for someone who is aware and removed from that perspective to identify these things.

So, that someone has identified these things.  What next?  I think, for most people, the answer has been maybe to tell that person what they think they are doing wrong.  Maybe to get upset with them when they don’t listen to what you say.  Maybe to share that information with the others they are close to.   Maybe to stop hanging out with them until they “get it together”.  Or maybe, the answer has been to simply disagree on these things and to hold on to the associated feelings of disappointment or frustration that you’ve created.  To hold these feelings in a place that is only visited in some moments that remind you, or when you are alone, or when you are with that person.

All I can do for you is work on myself, all you can do for me is work on yourself.

Often to tell someone what we believe they are doing wrong has absolutely no effect because they are at a certain level of consciousness, or on a certain wavelength that cannot hear your message.  Understand that if they were on a wavelength that could hear your message, then they would not be in the position they are in.  So they listen, but they cannot truly hear and you become upset.  So now we have a person who is suffering, who needs the love and help of a friend, and we get angry with them.

For a person already in a position without a lot of love and happiness, receiving negative energy from those closest to them will only push them further away.  If you decide next to stop seeing that person, you are only removing another positive influence from them and a person who can be there with them through their suffering.

But let’s say instead that you do not leave a friend.  You are loyal, but at the same time you are holding on to your opinions about that person.  By holding on to those opinions, you create a barrier between you.  There is an energy of judgment and self-righteousness that sets up a wall that blocks any vibrations of love and acceptance.  Whether you realize it or not, this energetic wall blocks any  real loving communication between you.  The person who is suffering can no longer connect, and you cannot connect to them.  You cannot be together.  If you are a dear friend, this severed or muddled connection can have a crippling effect and both will suffer through interactions that serve as a constant reminder of what was and no longer is.

All I can do for you is work on myself, all you can do for me is work on yourself.

By working on yourself, you become a person more full of love and understanding.  You work on being a person that anyone can talk to about anything.  Someone they know who will not judge and will be there for them no matter the case.  This love is transformative.  It is inevitable that we have feelings of unhappiness with regards to others and our relationships, but by working on ourselves we accept and let go of these feelings to become someone better for those around us.

I had something of an epiphany this week regarding how I view things and people and myself.  I feel as if I have pretty strong… opinions is not the word…  I think that first when I reflect on anything I’m reflecting in relation to myself.  It is my nature to always look to improve my understanding of myself and the world, and so improve the way I live.  When I gain new understanding, it is a trait of mine that I’m able to put this understanding in to practice, even if the practice is completely counter to practices of the masses.

As a result, I find myself, in some ways, living as not many others do.  But, in these ways, I find happiness and peace.  They are a product of my understanding and who I am at the moment and so they work for me.  Above that, I find further satisfaction in that they are counter to the masses.

In this satisfaction of further understanding, I now believe myself able to see the reasons for the suffering of not only myself but of others, as if I have the answers.  It always comes from a good place, but that does not excuse it.  Compounding this is the fact that I do care and think a lot about others so that often I am reasoning out these answers in my head.

But as I said, it is my nature to always look to improve my understanding of myself and the world, and so improve the way I live.  So, now I have a new understanding… and new answers.  But what about those other ones I felt so strongly about?  I think you see what I’m getting at.

We have recently come into the year 2016.  Around this time of the new year, I like to ask people if they have any “resolutions” or things they are planning for the coming year.  I like to do this because I like to get people thinking about these sorts of things if they haven’t been, or encourage and try to help them if they have.

This year especially I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they aren’t fans of or that they don’t believe in resolutions.

“What, all of a sudden this day I’m going to make all of these changes?”

“So many people make these resolutions and forget about them in a month.”

“I try to do stuff everyday, you know.”

I hear you, but let’s look at the New Year for what it is.  A new year; the end of the last.  Throughout the year there are many, many endings.  The end of the minute, the end of the hour, the end of the morning, the end of the day.  The end of the week, the end of the month, the end of the season.  Outside of units of time we have the end of jobs, the end of careers, the end of friendships (hopefully not :)), the end of intimate relationships, the end of a sporting season, the end of a school semester, the end of a stage of life, the end of a feeling, the end of a belief, the end of an view.

Any and many of these things can end within (let’s stick with) any given year and in any certain or uncertain way.  I probably am more reflective than most, but I deem it quite necessary to reflect on things as they begin and end, come and go or else how do we learn?  How do we grow wiser?  How do we not continue to make the same mistakes?

For example, an intimate relationship has ended.  This was a very passionate relationship, but lacked honesty and loyalty.  The highs were very high, but the lows were very low.  There were frequently highs and frequently lows, scaling as if by plane to the top of the mountain only to quickly plummet to the depths of the ocean.  You do not realize it so much when you are in it, but this instability affected all areas of your life.  You clung to the peaks believing in an eternal summit that was never possible.

If one was to not reflect on this relationship, it is very likely that they will go searching for someone that could bring them to the top of the mountain again.  It is very likely that they will cling to that feeling and hold on to the hope that they can stay there forever, maybe potentially with the initial partner at some point in the not-so-clear future.

Reflection could bring truth to the relationship.  What was it, really?  Who was I?  Who was she?  Who was he?  He was insecure.  He had been hurt before and could not trust and so his love was not true love, but a dependence or clinging to a physical feeling.  When his partner was not around, he needed that feeling anyway he could.  I was not understanding enough.  She had different values and looked for different things in life.  He never had a father figure to teach him how to treat a woman.

Or, she really loved me unconditionally, that really meant a lot to me.  He really valued family and I’ve now realized how much my family means to me.  Her strength was not based on external things, but on her knowledge of her inherent value and worth as a human being.  Or, thinking years later, that really was a wonderful relationship full of love, I need to build something like that again.  And so on and so forth.

As a much more frequently occurring example , a day has ended.  How was this day?  How was I feeling?  If it wasn’t a good day, or I wasn’t feeling well, what was lacking?  Did I sleep enough?  How did I eat?  Was I eating lots of processed foods?  Is there something on my mind that I need to deal with?  A conversation I need to have?  A task I need to complete?  If it was a good day, then why was it good?  How can I have days like this each day?  How can I feel like this each day?

This type of reflection brings us wisdom.  It allows us to come closer to our own truths.  It teaches us what we should seek out, what we should be indifferent to, and what we should avoid.  It gives us understanding of ourselves and our world.  Reflection, in my opinion, is vital for improvement.  If we didn’t think about why things are the way they are, we would never change things for the the better.

But it is often difficult for this reflection to occur.  We are so busy.  We live in a system where we must work and work only to be bombarded by a constantly flowing media stream.  “Don’t think about your life.  Don’t think about who we are.  Don’t think about your place in the universe.  Just continue on.  Consume.”  That is one of the reasons why we frequently find ourselves in patterns of behaviour that are entirely negative and only bring us unhappiness.

The celebration of the New Year is one time where we all recognize together the end of one thing and the beginning of another.  In many cases we are given two full days of reflection free of our chains.  More than anything, the New Year provides us an opportunity to reflect on the year that just ended.  Once again, who was I?  How did I feel?  How did I grow?  How were my relationships?  What do I need to do more of?  What do I need to let go of?  In 2014, I resolved to quit smoking cigarettes.  It was an extremely unhealthy habit that was not serving me.  In 2015, I resolved that I needed to give more of myself.  This blog is only one small manifestation of that resolution.  These resolutions of the past two years were two of the most important changes I have made and have only brought more positive changes bringing more love, more health and more life.  They are the result of reflecting on the previous year and asking what I wanted of the next.  This year, I resolve to create more.  I love to read and to listen to music especially, and this year I want to begin to bring some of my own artistry to the world.  So far, that means I will start to take guitar lessons to create my own music and write longer pieces on the way to publishing a book in the future.  These are only the first manifestations of more and more creating in my everyday life.

A year encompasses 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, 4 seasons, and the beginning and the end of so many things.  We should not forget what this signifies and the opportunities it presents us to learn, grow, love, and live.

Happy New Year.