A Letter To Mom

Been really missing you. I hope you know that I do. I know I'm not like anyone else that you know in this world and I know that makes me difficult to understand, but just know that I understand deeply the gravity of the decisions that I make in my life. I think I somehow have a gift for projecting myself into the future and seeing the potential outcomes of each new situation that I encounter. The other night, while meditating, I even had a sort of panicked revelation about my decision to move out of the country. In this epiphany, I saw a future where I was halfway across the world and exploring the path that I feel, somehow, aligns with my true destiny, but I also saw that my family, after years of wondering why I do what I do, had all but given up on me, as the sheer distance between us geographically(and, perhaps, the distance across time) had made it all the more impossible for us to connect. I saw this as if it had already happened and I experienced, simultaneously, the intense joy and excitement of pursuing an existence where I was completely true to the desires of my heart and the deep, distraught, sadness and pain of feeling virtually severed from my family(and friends) who, by no fault of their own, had long stared with vexing uncertainty into the seemingly infinite abyss of when(or even if) they might ever see me again and who had inevitably realized that they might never understand why I went so far away so long ago...

In thinking about this, I became quite devastated and it almost made me not want to go anywhere ever, but then I remembered the extreme wonder of the universe and the deep, burning, curiosity I had within to be out there exploring it all and all of the years of consequential unhappiness I experienced whenever I had ignored all of that and rooted myself firmly in just one place. So, I thought to myself, the ones I love might not understand just now, but this is my chance to look deep within...beyond fear...without hesitation...and truly listen to my inner self and, who knows, maybe even find my true purpose in this life. Some of the greatest philosophical and spiritual minds throughout the ages have conceded, with much wisdom, that the purpose in life must be just learning how TO BE and how to be at peace with that and all that is, but I think the truth is even deeper than all that.

I think there's something each of us is here to do and that something has everything to do with what we each feel in our hearts and that in following those feelings we finally begin to understand who we REALLY are. I think traveling is what I've always dreamed of more than anything and I feel as if it, and the encounters that I will have as a result of doing it, are part of the role that I was born to fulfill. I've begun to realize that all my dreams that I've followed after with such determination in my life were mostly just a means of providing me with the resources to ultimately fulfill that true, underlying, dream of traveling the world and to be honest, I don't think the world is really even enough for me. Perhaps, nothing will ever be, as I see so clearly that there is just too much to see and learn and experience in this life and, because of that, I think I will always feel like I have to know what's out there and seek after the meaning behind it all.

Also, although it may seem like it, even to myself at times, I have no desire to live this life in complete solitude forever. I just have such radical ideas about this life that people rarely seem to understand me enough to truly connect with me. I would travel out to the stars for the rest of my life though if I could and I'd welcome anyone who wanted to take on that adventure with me, but that's just the way that I am. I think I was born with that for sure...that insatiable longing to know what's out there beyond everything...beyond all space and time...beyond the illusions of this three dimensional reality...

In the meantime, however, I travel in my consciousness through meditation and soon I feel that I must set out even further into the world. The need to do so makes no suggestion about how much I care about or love my family or about anyone else, but rather, whether or not I do it...and whether or not I listen to the wisdom of my heart...makes every statement in the world about how much I care about myself... :)

I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU VERY MUCH!!! :D

Let Go And Love All

“Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.”  - Dalai Lama XIV

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” - Rumi

In this earthly existence, I believe that monogamous relationships are a beautiful tool that are here to help us begin to understand the concept of what "LOVE" for another individual truly is. By this logic, however, it also seems that, in the end, these experiences are merely a rudimentary step along the pathway to our own personal enlightenment in our lives and to the elevation of our soul. In other words, these encounters seem to serve as more of a model for(or a way of) showing us how we should love and respect ALL beings equally and one of the best ways to do this, I believe, is to begin considering these experiences with others as just that...a beautiful experience. In this way we can start to relinquish our hold on one another and our expectations of others by simply not locking ourselves down to the idea of having just one intimate partner for the rest of our lives and opening our hearts to the whole infinite world of possible experiences that are out there for us to explore.

Our Western culture generally recoils at the idea of having amorous connections with more than one person in our lives, but I think we have something to learn from everyone we meet in this life and that people will come and go throughout our lifetime who have something to teach us through our experiences with them. When we become romantically involved with someone, we often unrealisitically begin to expect or hope that it might last forever, exclusively, but that's only because we've been brought up with our own limited perceptions of the world and perhaps even of our very existence itself here in the West.

Most of us have grown up in a culture where being in possession and control of things and of the people in our lives is a thing to be prized. As a result, we most often end up wanting someone in our lives that we can call our very own(and no one else's) in this life. Eastern traditions, however, have known for perhaps thousands of years, that in order for us to grasp mentally those higher understandings of life and love and nature, that we first have to let go of all those external views that are imposed upon us by our environment, as well as, the things inside us that often make us feel like we need to control the world and to covet things for ourselves...and this is done through a TRUE embodiment of love.

I believe that many of those individuals who have reached higher vibrational levels of consciousness through extremely deep meditation or even those in shamanic or tribal traditions who have, since the dawn of man, taken ayahuasca or payote or other consciousness expanding substances, that push one beyond the infinitely small minded nature of cultural and societal views, standards and expectations, understand this. This is because these altered states of consciousness allow one to step outside of the constraints of the three dimensional illusions of the world and thrust the individual beyond everything they've previously known into a place where, perhaps for the first time in their lives, they are able to think for themselves without the external suppositions of their environment.

That's not to say, of course, to go out and make love to everyone you meet or even to make it your goal to have as many experiences with as many people as you can in this life. It's only to say that beyond looking for someone in life that we can possess and call our very own, that rather, in the natural flow of things, we can be more open to the possibility of the experiences that we can have with people, what we can learn from them and what they can mean to our lives. In other words, we can take what we learned with someone and apply it to future encounters with others in our life, as a measure of refining our hearts and fine tuning our own expressions of love and through that achieve a higher understanding and wisdom of love along the way that moves us into higher levels of conscious thought.

Then, maybe we can learn to love the people we encounter along the way even more, from a place beyond jealousy and the fear of loss in our minds, as we allow them the freedom to be and express themselves as uniquely as they possibly can and hopefully, in turn, they can love us enough to allow us to do the same. The bond between two people is a beautiful thing to be sure, but just imagine all the things in your life that you couldn't have learned had you stayed with that first person that came along. It can be so easy to become caught up in our own whimsically romantic notions of saying that "we've arrived" or that "we've found our one true soul mate", but in all reality, in doing that we are really only closing ourselves off to the endless possibilities of deeper experience that this life has to offer.

There is another way, however. I mean, we can always discover that same true affinity for all beings by the traditional/historical method of simply not being taken in by intimate encounters with anyone at all. This, of course, has been done by the monks, the nuns, The Dalai Lama, The Buddha and so on, throughout the ages in our world, and likely because those individuals who sought true enlightenment realized at some point in their lives that romantic involvement with another might only complicate or distract an individual from the journey towards a pure, unbiased, love for all beings. I'm not completely sure, that we were necessarily meant to follow this route though, as those experiences of love and intimacy most certainly seem to be an integral part of the human experience that are rooted deeply within our souls.

I think that love and even intimacy are experiences that were perhaps meant to be explored with many people throughout our lifetime on many different levels. Our immature culture scoffs at this, however, and tries to tell us that that this is taboo and that we should be seeking "the one that's meant for us" in our lives and, in general, I think we pretty much follow, possibly unknowingly, what culture dictates that we do because it's really all we've ever known in our lives, but, by this logic, I tell you that I think there are many "one's" out there for us to encounter in our lifetime. I understand that this way of thinking is not a generally accepted view in our society, but I think that futher illustrates the point. The point is, we can make the choice right now to be free of fear and control and all the pain in the world if we can allow ourselves to just open up our minds and our hearts enough to just let go...

"NAMASTE"

(which means)

I honor the place in you in which the entire universe dwells.

I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light and of peace.

When you are in that place in you,

And I am in that place in me,

We are one.

 

What Are We Doing?

What are we doing???...This is probably the first question that often comes to mind when someone begins to see the bigger picture of what humanity has done so far with the unfathomably profound gift of consciousness that we've all inherited through billions and billions of years of evolution in this universe. We've traveled across light years of space and were seeded on this planet by the stars to do one thing, to answer the question that's been burning in the mind of the universe itself and the very reason for the existence of everything we could ever know since the beginning of time. I think that this question that the universe has really been trying to solve through all of its infinite expressions of existence is, "What am I?"

I don't even think the universe knows the answer to this question any more than we know what we are, otherwise there would be no purpose for our existence here. It seems to be trying to figure out, through every random occurence it can allow us and everything out there to have, in this existence and every possible parallel one, what it is to exist and how it came to be.

To do this it would have needed to empty out it's conscious awareness of itself completely, the same way that one does when they meditate or when they ingest a psychoactive substance. In order to learn from that which is outside of all known reality and that which only seems to be completely unknowable in our current state of mind, requires that the old state of mind be entirely cleared out of everything it has previously known and experienced so that it can allow those inner parts of itself, of which we are a part, the freedom and universal power to explore and create anything that we can deem possible in our conscious minds. Only then might the source of all things that birthed the universe discover every aspect of what it truly is. In the same way we can connect with our own inner universe by quieting our minds and allowing those deep inner parts of ourselves the freedom to explore and be something new and different and unique, that we might receive a kind of knowledge from beyond the veil that transcends all of space and time.

So, what are we doing with this consciousness we have to wonder? Where are we taking ourselves on this fantastical adventure we call life?  In the past we've established systems of disharmony and separation, world governments and divisive borders and cultures that push us away from each other and strip us of our human link with one another, but overall our lives seem to be perhaps moving towards a greater interconnectedness, as we've painstakingly been learning from our mistakes since the dawn of time.

Here is a video by Terence McKenna that might paint a deeper picture of this process of evolution that we've all been going through...



Pain Is The Feeling Of Healing

The body is quite remarkable and intuitive, particularly when it is working in conjunction with the mind. The very moment that the body becomes injured it begins implementing the process of healing instinctively, but when this process is supported by the mind as well it can be an unstoppable force. It's true that when we sustain an injury our nerves are affected and we feel heightened sensations from what we call "pain receptors" in the body, but perhaps these sensual encounters are more than meets the eye.

Obviously, no one likes to get hurt and without injury, the body seems to have a natural balance. What if, however, we're not fully taking perception into account? What if pain only feels adverse to us because "painful" is all we've ever really known "pain" to be? What if we have only programmed ourselves to see it that way, rather than to view it as a beautiful new opportunity to learn and to heal? We tend to look at the negatives in our society. It's bred into us and those feelings most certainly affect how we heal.

We all know that through experiments using the placebo effect, science has proven time and time again that positive thoughts and beliefs about the body can actually speed up the healing process. We also know through quantum physics that sub-atomic particles, the very foundation of matter, can be affected simply through conscious focus and thought. So, why wouldn't this work for our bodies as well? If the very stuff that everything is made up of can be affected by thought, then it only makes sense that thought would have a direct affect on the body. There have been countless studies showing how negative thoughts and stress actually degrade the health of the body, so why wouldn't the reverse be true? Why wouldn't positive thoughts promote the health of the body?

We live in a culture that tends to focus on what's wrong as a means to putting things right. It doesn't even seem to occur to us that focusing our thoughts on the negative, even with a positive end goal in mind, might actually be counter intuitive to bringing more positive into our lives. So, it seems to me that if our bodies are so receptive to the way we feel about them, then maybe pain as we know it is not really what we think it is. What if pain is actually the feeling of healing and the negative sensations that we experience are only the result of a lifetime of self conditioning and negative thoughts that we have sent to the body, which has only served the purpose of slowing down its natural healing rate? We already know that pain is entirely perceptual as we've all heard of the term "pain threshold", which, of course, is a term used to define the exact level of intensity that an individual begins to feel pain. Each individual's threshold is different according to their perception of what "pain" truly is. We know it's perceptual by the fact that a person can condition themselves mentally to not feel pain and, in fact, can even alter their perception of pain to the point where pain seems to be a pleasurable thing.

Healing seems to be a natural process. It's hard wired into our bodies, but perhaps pain is not, as what we feel, and how much of it we feel, seems to be left entirely up to our own perceptions. So, if we begin to shift those perceptions we have of our bodies and our lives into a more positive place and meditate daily on those positive things, it seems likely that our own capacity for healing and personal well being will rise to the occasion as well. Then, we human beings can truly begin to explore our own unlimited potential.

Severing Your Technological Umbilical Chord

I had recently taken a couple of camping trips into the wilderness to sort of get away from it all & reconnect with nature. It was refreshing to take in the natural environment & get away from my computer & cell phone for a change. The first thing I noticed was the silence. Not just the silence of being out of the city, but the complete & utter silence from my phone. No more calls. No more texts. No more Facebook updates buzzing my pocket every 5 seconds. It was clear to me immediately how much I didn't really need it.

On my last trip, while gazing at this beautiful river running through the forest, I began to examine my life & just how I'd been spending my time the last few years. I started to realize just how dependent I had allowed myself to become on Facebook in particular. This revelation sort of left a deep pit in my stomach as I thought about all the hours I'd spent uploading, tagging, commenting & writing perhaps somewhat hollow posts, in an effort to avoid the somewhat frequent snickers that often arose from attempting anything philosophical. It seems people aren't generally really looking to hear your ideas on Facebook as much as the social scoop, the goings on.

All at once, I could see just how jacked into the internet "matrix" I had become & how Facebook had been this invisible force that sat on my shoulders day after day, frequently beckoning me to log on, as if whispering in my ear to go and see what was happening in the virtual world. It became clear to me that I was actually really tired of having to do that just to know what was happening with people. I started thinking about what life was like before social networks(Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.) and seemed to remember life having more of a natural ebb & flow; an existence not governed by anything but one's own exploratory nature & the natural course of daily experiences. 

Now it seems, not just for myself, but for many of the people that I've had the privilege of knowing, that social platforms are becoming the ultimate medium for planning nearly all of life's daily encounters. I mean, I've rarely known what was going on for some time, except what Facebook seemed to be telling me & this phenomenon doesn't seem to be showing any signs of slowing. Virtually every branch of my family has joined Facebook to date. Even my grandmother seems to have become somewhat obsessed with Facebook games. It seems to be a phenomenon that has become so far-reaching, for millions & millions of people, the world over & much like the matrix of this illusory, quantum, universe we live in...it's all around us...and it's growing.

So, in an effort to get back to the basics & simplify my life; to reconnect with nature & my spiritual side; I shut down my long time running, heavily invested in, Facebook account & let me tell you...it feels good! :)