Why should we be at peace with our mortality?

There are two ways to look at life.  The first one is as if every day you are given one more day to live, thinking that if you knew for sure this was your last day, how would you want your last day to go? Would you want to be happy or would you want to let things bother you?
The second one is seeing this day as one less day to live.  One day closer to the blissfulness that awaits us all when we pass. In this case, if you are one day closer to that blissfulness why not be happy about it?  Why not enjoy that you are almost done? Why not celebrate?
In either case none of the things that happen today will matter, so why let them bother you?
To me it does not matter which one you choose, each of them should be respected by others.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

In the process of ascension, one of the things we learn is to be at peace with our mortality.  To accept our mortality and that of others fully.  Spirit once said to me that only those who stay alive are the ones who suffer, everyone else is free.  I wondered what exactly Spirit meant by that and then I had a few people around me who lost someone they loved, each of them were devastated.  Everyone was crying, everyone was remembering all the things that they didn't do with them.  Everyone would point out how we all have very limited time and we should be happy that we are alive.  The misery that came from every death was astounding.  I couldn't understand because to tell you the truth, whether you believe in Spirit or not, when it comes to death... It is just an ending... It is the end of every bit of suffering, every bit of pain and so that person was not suffering anymore so why be so miserable that they were gone? Why not be happy that they are now free?

In my belief, the only thing that dies is our physical body and nothing else.  The physical body though is just a vessel to carry the energy that we are.  That energy is released and freed when we "die".  That energy goes back to the source of all life, to a place where there are no bounds.  And that place is the most amazing place ever.  It is a place full of peace and love; a love that no human could ever understand because it is a love that no matter what you do, you are worthy of.  And with this belief I started to realize how bad I just wanted to be there, how ready I was to go back to this place I call home.  The first time I felt this it felt bad that I wanted to go, it felt like I was resisting and everyone around me, those who are not as awaken just made the feeling be even worse.

Eventually I stopped saying anything, I just kept waking up saying to myself: "You have one less day here, you are almost home, you are almost done" and those words made me keep this joyous feeling alive, it made me smile.  Everyone else was oblivious to it, they didn't know why I was so happy but I felt like I couldn't tell them because as soon as I did I would fall from my happy place.  They would all start to pull me down with their words and their lack of understanding.  Some of them would even stop talking to me, not realizing that more than likely when I actually do go home they would end up talking about how much they wish I was still here.  They would all start saying how much they missed me, but none of them would ever acknowledge that when they had me here, they pulled away out of fear of losing me.  It will all then be very hypocritical because the time to be around, the time to talk, the time to enjoy is now.  It is not tomorrow, it was not yesterday, it is today.

Two days ago I let people pull me down from that, as soon as I said I was ready to go home they all started to give me reasons why I was supposedly still here, why I needed to stay here.  Oddly enough all the reasons that they gave me were based on the same reason they were saying I should not want to die--selfishness.  There was not one of them that said to me: "You are almost there, so don't fret" each and everyone of them said something like: "I am happy that you are still here" or "I don't like it when you say that because I want you to still be here" or my favorite "There are people who still need you to be here".   It is pure selfishness, the same selfishness that they throw in someone's face when someone says they don't want to be here.  All those statements are about them, they are not about me, they are about how they feel and what they would feel when I am no longer in physical form.  It is not about caring about me, it is caring about them.  It was not respecting the things I wanted, but only making sure that the things they wanted happened.

It used to bother me that they didn't understand, that they didn't get it.  It was frustrating that they didn't see how selfish they were too by putting themselves before someone they say they care about.  I asked Spirit why it was that I was so bothered by this, why is it that I wanted them to understand so much.  And then I realized that I was putting too much weight on the things that people who are unable to understand my path (they really don't have to) are feeling.  You see, I am not here to make anyone feel better.  I am not here to control anyone else's feelings.  I am here to guide some of those who are open to learning, those who are open to understanding of a different way of seeing things.  I am not here to push anyone to believe any different, I wish people could respect what I believe more but I also know that I can't make them.  And so my other job is to not let them affect me, what they want and what they feel is not my concern.  Giving guidance does not mean the others will do as what they are being guided to do, no matter how much you would want them to.

So what next? Since I realized that most humans are not capable of being at peace with their mortality, I have also realized that the more I point it out, the more of those people who are not in alignment with me will go.  The more of those people who don't really care will walk away, because they can't handle it and that is ok.  The relationships will evolve to something different and that will be amazing to watch and create.  It won't mean I love each of them any less either.  It will just mean that their actions, no matter how much I care about them, won't bother me.  It also means that I will not be afraid of telling them that whatever they feel about whether or not I am here in physical form or not, does not matter to me because they don't get to choose what will get me to my happy place.  They are not in charge of my happiness, I am.  And because I am in charge of my happiness, I get to choose how I get to that happiness, they just need to worry about how they are going to get to theirs.

So why should we be at peace with our mortality?  Because we are all going to die.  The sooner we come to accept and be at peace with that, the sooner we will start living life differently.  The sooner we will not worry about the things we can't control.  The better life will flow because then you realize that no matter how you look at life, whether it is one less day to live or one more day to live, what happens today will not matter when we are no longer here, whether we die today or in 30 years is irrelevant.  All we gotta do today is celebrate either that you are closer to your destination or that you were given an opportunity to do something different.  Either way, the goal is the same--to get happy.  Whichever way you choose to look at it is up to you, all the rest of us have to do is respect it.

Randomness

I was sitting here thinking: "One should not spend money they have not yet acquired or spend all the money they have acquired."  That is the problem America has, we are a nation of spenders; every penny we get paid we spend.  We worked all our lives to pay for things and then when the time came to retire we had nothing to live on, so what did we do? We cried out and said: "Government help us." What did the government do? They created Social Security and said well we are going to take money off your paycheck and save it for when you retire because you are not capable of doing that on your own. 

Then the years passed and the plan proved to be flawed, there were not enough money being taken out of one person's paycheck in order to provide for that person's retirement, and people were living longer than government thought they would live.  Now, Social Security is not solvent and my generation will probably not get to ever use it.  Whose fault is that though?

 

Partly is our fault, our society is bred to be spenders.  We live off the idea that we can always get a new credit card, charge what we want and pay it later.  We believe that eventually we are going to make more money and then when we make more money we spend more money.  As I was sitting here thinking why in the hell do we do that? And all I could come up was because we are unhappy. 

It is a human condition to get rewarded for things we don't want to do, we go on a diet and after one week of eating only herbs we say: "Well I have been good this week, let me buy me an ice cream."  It is something that comes from many many generations ago, we clean our rooms because our parents promise that we will get something in return, the reward for stopping what we were doing (having fun) and doing something we do not like. 

And then as we grow older we are marked by our parents telling us how we have to make a living.  A child comes with a dream they have, they want to be an artist and the parent will feed that dream until the child reaches a certain age and then the parent will say: "You are too old for that, you need to think about how you are going to make a living.  You cannot make a living by being an artist."  This gets repeated so much that eventually the child ends up going to college (something they did not want to do) and studying something they did not want to study, and then getting a job they did not want to get. 

The child, now an adult, was conditioned to go and work at a job they will never enjoy but that "pays well."  So they go to work every day, they are miserable because they don't enjoy what they do, at the end of the work day or the work week they go home in all their misery to find something that will make them feel better.  Video games, alcohol, drugs, shopping, food... Anything that will reward them for doing something they did not like to do. 

And so there goes the money they make, they believe that they deserve to buy the video games, the alcohol, the drugs, the food, because they did something that was draining and that they did not enjoy.  Every few months they have to take a break from their jobs because "they deserve it", "they've earned it", they have worked so hard for so many months that now it is time to spend money on a vacation.  But wait!  They are still paying off the last vacation that they took, and then what? Well the credit card is almost paid off so we can use it again right now.  Then we will get back to our miserable jobs and complain about having to pay them off.

After this I was thinking: "what if the reason we have so many depressed people and angry people wanting to kill others all the time was that we are all so miserable because we are conditioned to do things that we completely dislike?"

Could you imagine a world where the child is never told that they should just make sure they go work at something that will pay them enough to live and instead we tell them to go follow their passion and put focus on that.  Tell them that yes it will be hard work but that it is something they can do.  Teach them that hard work is not despised when it is something we love to do. 

Then probably we would have less alcoholics, less drug addicts, less angry, depressed, and violent people around.  Because they would be focus on doing something they love to do and not something they have to do in order to survive and then maybe all these different things they spend money on would never be an issue, that extra money could be put away for retirement.  It could be put away to pay off a house so you do not have to worry about paying rent when you are no longer able to work.  It could be invested and made more rather than just spent.  People could even help each other more rather than compete with each other so much. 

Maybe if we learned how to be and remain happy and full of joy then we would not cry and cling for the help of the very people who thrive and advance their lives by making sure we continue to have the same problems. 

Family

The past few months have been a true test and one question has always come to mind: what does it mean to be family and what makes someone your family?
I guess there is a conventional definition of family where family is someone who has some sort of blood relation to you or a legal relation to you through a piece of paper.  The bond, especially the blood related bond has been taken into a level where no matter who you are, if you are related by blood to a person whose views or actions you don't agree with then it does not matter that you don't agree with them or that you don't want that around, the convention states that because they are related to you by blood that you are supposed to put up with all that bullshit!!!!
Unfortunately this is not something I agree with and this is where society and I collide.  In the past few years I have learned that those who are blood related to me are people I don't necessarily want to be around, they are people I can't change and that have different views or ideas about life than I do.  This disagreement has caused a constant battle between these people, one battle that I realized I will never be able to win, and while it is sad because some of these people I love with all my heart I also realize that if you are going to be in constant battle with someone then it's better to stay away.
There is a saying: "You can't divorce your family", I was told you can't say "I am your ex-family", the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard and read.  For one, you can divorce a family, there are many different ways that a family is created and one of those is by marriage of two people from two different families and if that marriage does not work then the two people file for divorce and well you divorce the family you created.  Now, if we are talking about family that is related by blood to include: sisters, mothers, fathers, brothers, grandparents, etc... Well, no you can't literally divorce them, but you can stop being around them.  You can just say: I have no family.
And yes they will throw a tantrum because they are being ignored and for some reason whenever they need anything from you they use the: "I am family" card to try and guilt you into helping them.
That "I am family" card is one of the most overused and illogical emotional blackmail moves I have ever fucking heard in my entire life.  This is something that comes up when the sister that decided to be a fucking loser felon gets out of jail and suddenly mom and dad want the other sibling to spend time with the family and accept the sister back making believe that everything is fine and dandy and she did not do anything to get herself into trouble, so let me go ahead and say: well, she is family, she is your sister... and? So what if she is my sister? Has she actually proven that she has learned her fucking lesson or is she going to continue to be a fucking felon? I can forgive someone but that does not mean I have to let them into my life and sorry but the "they are family" card is not logical enough to make me change my mind.
Or the son that is a drug addict, has stolen numerous times from his parents and suddenly comes back asking for help, the parents are told well... he is your son and he is family, you have to help him... mmmm how about: he is your son and you have tried helping him by giving him money in the past and that has failed numerous times so the help he now needs to is to actually fall flat on his face and maybe he will actually find his way into becoming a good member of society.
I've had my family blast my fucking phone because they needed something from me and when I did not answer right away I was seen as the bad guy and as the person who always wants to create problems.  These people don't realize that they are not priorities in someone else's lives and when they figure out that they are not a priority they get pissy and they use the "well I am family and I should come first" mmm NO!!! NO!!! NO!!! AND FUCKING HELL NO!!!! Here is how I see family and people may or may not agree with me and that is fine and dandy...
For me family are just people, they are persons you came to know not by a personal decision you made when you were finally able to make a decision about who, what, when and where people would be allowed in your life; therefore you got stuck with them until you are finally able to say look these are the kinds of people I want around me, and if they are not one of them then tough fucking luck for them.
The people you surround yourself with should be people that add something good to your life not drain the good you have going from it.  They shouldn't be people who drag you down and try to emotionally blackmail you because "they are family".  You should be surrounded by people who love you, the good kind of love the one that does not ask for anything in return, not by people who are constantly throwing it in your face how much they've done for you; yes this is to include your parents!!! As a parent it is my responsibility to provide for my child, make sure she is fed and clothed and well taken care of.  Having a child is a choice you make and you don't get to grow older and say to said child: ohh I did this for you or that for you! That was your fucking responsibility so if the child grows up and decides to not show any gratitude for it, then suck it! It would be your fault for not raising a child with manners although, they don't have the obligation to say thank you to you for anything!!!
So, if your family, those blood related people are causing you more pain than anything else, then stop talking to them, go out and find people that are like you, build a new family, there is no need to keep people that drag you down around, seriously, in life there will be enough of those that you might end up being forced to deal with because of a job you want to do, or a school you decide to go to.  Family is not people you were able to choose at the beginning of your life but they are most certainly people you can choose not to have around when you get older, if they don't bring anything good out of you, why the hell have them? I mean I could see keeping them around if they neither added or took away from your way of life and from how you want to handle your life but if they are taking away more and giving you more pain than joy then don't feel guilty about not talking to them. It is not an obligation to be around people you don't really want to be around, it is not an obligation to try and make their lives better, make your life better by getting rid of those who, as much as it hurts to say it, have done nothing more than hinder yourself from moving forward.  Let the guilt go and go form new relationships with people that are actually worth your effort, the people that don't ask for anything and that don't use emotional blackmail to get their way.
I promise that after the hurt of realizing how useless it is to say one has a family, it will get better, you will attract people like you, people that have same values and eventually you will have the opportunity to make your own family and instill those good values in it, however when your kids grow up and they decide that they do not want to be like you or go with the values you have taught them, then... let your kids be, they are only given to you to care for until they are old enough and capable enough to care for themselves, you will always love them but that love is not something you should ever ask in return.

Nightly Thoughts...

And I guess all we really need is one question to actually get us thinking, but it is always up to us whether we want to think about the question or just dismiss it and keep on going...

And so today after a long day I got a message from an old friend, a friend that had moved back to her home country when we were still teens and now time has passed, life has happened and she was wanting to know how things were going, she was a best friend during those high school years but time and growth have happened that it appears harder to have a conversation with any of them. As much as I love them and I am here to listen to them, the time that was not spend through the years just letting each other know what was going on seems to have caught up with us and the easiness in which we were able to strike a conversation is no longer there. 

Anyway... enough of that because I am sure everyone has gone through that at some point, you stop talking and communicating with someone and then suddenly you try again and all you get is small talk, something that most people are ok with but unfortunately I am not.  All in all my friend asked me why I had moved to the city I am living in now, why so far away from family and some friends that were left behind, it seemed incomprehensible to her that I would just go out on my own and find a new place when socially we all want to always be around people we love and that are familiar to us even if those are no good for us.

I sat here and just wondered how to answer her, no answer would have ever suffice to explain to her how I just really woke up one day and felt like this is where I needed to be and then went with it.  It has come to my attention how hard it is for people to understand the concept of going with your gut, of following your bliss, going where you feel you will be happy, whether that place is full of friends or not, whether there is family there or not, the place where your gut feeling is telling you to go is the place where you should be. 

Most people decide that they have to make everything fit for the purpose of making it logical right now, any move, any change in job; it all seems to be an issue of how much money will I make, how much family support will I have or how many more opportunities will arise from this move.  Life never seems to be about whether or not we will be happy doing what we are doing and the sad part is that now a days I find it not surprising when people look at me like I am a total weirdo because I just don't have a 5-year life plan that I am following.  

It is sad because life is not planned, it is also sad because when I say: "I am doing this because it gives me joy and while your offer of working in this company that has great benefits and great pay which will according to you allow me to buy all the things I (according to you) need, I would die working in a place I don't like, so I am sorry but I choose to be poor of money and rich in joy." I am looked at like a completely irrational person... I don't know when it was that life changed, I am sure that at one point human beings looked for joy rather than things and it was the amount of joy they had in their lives that measured their success and not the amount of things or the amount of money they had. 

But hey! I think I've written about this before right? Follow your bliss, you gut, your intuition... Lately in my own spiritual path I have been doing that more and more, and all I can say is that while it is extremely hard to let yourself be guided by something you don't quite understand, it has also been extremely rewarding and fulfilling.  I have learned a lot in the past few years and even recently, still learning to trust because as any other human being in this planet I want logic and I want everything to be connected at the moment I am doing things but life is not like that, life connects all the dots as you are living it. 

Last Sunday, another old friend contacted me (I guess one can say that there is something that needed reminding), this friend was one that I had worked with for a a few months a few years back, from a distance I have seen him achieve certain things in his life that anyone else would love to have, so far he has reached part of the potential I knew he had, just this gut feeling telling me hey that guy over there, he has the ability to be great! What kind of greatness he achieved was and will continue to be up to him.  So I am sitting there letting him know about how life is going (and this is one of those people with whom you can always talk and he will always listen, and it just makes you feel like hey it's all good and I get what you are saying, and that part of him has not changed) and he is letting me know how his life is going and then he stated how he had recently come to appreciate free time more, work was busy, managing people is harder than expected, things change when everything you and accomplish is not based only on your work but it's actually based on the performance of others. 

And so I said to him: This is why I do what I do, I might not have a lot of money, I might not have a brand new car, I might not have all the things that people say I should have to be happy, but I have joy, the only time I am not full of joy is when I am talking to people that are trying to tell me what to do. And so, I said, I have ended up with not too many friends and I have a hard time talking to people my age because they are all looking for that, they have graduated college, they want to get a good job, get married, buy a nice house, have kids and all that "good stuff" meanwhile I am here saying to myself, I tried that and life slapped me so hard when I went with what was supposed to be done and I was not happy, now, some of those folks my age have their good job, some have gotten a house and have the nice car, but the job they have is not something they really want to do and so here comes Friday and they are all getting ready to go out and party and go to the bar and get drunk because they just can't stand their job and they need a distraction (he was laughing while I was saying this and nodding, possibly because he is one of them) and I am at home saying to myself ohh I love my job I want to go and work some more and then that is what I do. 

But this concept is so hard for people to understand, it is not until they are about to die that they realize ohh I should have lived more and worked less, maybe my life would have been different if I would have not planned it so much and I would have done what I truly wanted not what would have given me more money.  It is so hard to understand that your fate is to die and that you don't know when that will happen but that whatever you do between now and then should be something that fills you with joy not with pain and regret.  That whatever you do right now is what counts and it is even a harder concept to accept that when you do the things you love the most then the money usually follows, it comes with it, you get good at what you love because you practice it daily without frowning at it, you love it so why wouldn't you do it? you want to work at it, you want to get better, it's not forced, and anything that is not forced and that is allowed to flow and is full of love it's always great! I don't think there is anyone that could tell me right now that anything that was created with love and passion is not a great thing. The energy it gives out is amazing and yet we refuse to do what we love and end up doing what we think we must. 

I've probably rambled enough tonight... point is though, follow your gut, your intuition, trust it, where you want to be right now, go there! Nothing is stopping you, life is about living it and doing what you love, when you do what you love you attract love.  Don't sit there and think that because parents have raised you to think that the goal of life is to acquire things so that you can have a safe retirement and no debt and blah blah blah, and that the only way to get that is to have a good job that your job might not be perfect but it's good as long as it pays well, mmm let me tell you something, those parents were about your age when they had you, and they are probably not at the end yet but just about to reach it, a period when everything changes and then the priorities change and then life is given a different meaning, time is more important because then it becomes quite clear that you don't have enough of it, and you look to spend that small amount you have left with the ones you love but we are busy being busy and so it is an endless vicious cycle, then death arrives and we regret the time that was not spent and the moments we missed.  And the flaw in all of this is that we all keep thinking that we will reach that age and that we will have time to do the things we do but we really don't, meanwhile we are missing out on the best things in life.  The song Cat's in the cradle by Harry Chapin puts this truth out there, but I guess it's just a song we sing until the time we actually decide to listen to it and get the meaning out of it. 

So, go do what you love, go where you want to go and don't worry about figuring it all out, even those who think that they've got it figured out are still trying to figure it all out, as one of my friends stated to me today: I will figure it out as I go along but I will be joyful along the way... 

Cleaning out your life

I was having a conversation with a friend today, she was telling me about one of her little ones always saying that her grandmother who passed away a little bit ago was fixing her house and making it into a castle, this got me thinking...

Lately I've been asking myself why certain things have happened in my life and why it is that it takes so long for me to be able to reach certain "goals" I have set for myself and then I realized that in order for us to be able to get something new and amazing we first need to get rid of the old and dirty and then we have to clean out the dust left behind before we put something new in otherwise the new things will get dirty and won't last.

That's how our lives are, we are born into certain families, some people have great parents others have not so great parents and others have very abusive parents. As we grow older we start to accumulate an immense amount of friends, some are good some are not so good. Some of us have great siblings others have siblings that somehow even though they grew up with the same set of parents they ended up with a completely different moral compass than us.

And so it is, we keep growing and we keep dragging these people with us even though we know that they don't belong in our lives. Yes, most of the people we tend to drag along are family and close friends because society states that family should never be left behind and that family will always be there. We say things like: well he is my father, or well she is my mother, she is my sister, or I have known him or her since we were in diapers and that's why we accept whatever behavior they have towards us. This is not true, just because they are related to you, or because you've known them for a long time it does not mean they belong in your life...

Trust me I understand completely how that goes because I've done that; I carried on a member of my family and kept trying to make things work so that they could remain in my life and each time it seemed like things would be ok for a little while but then they would go back to the same way they were before and it was exhausting and hurtful because it was broken to the point of it not being able to be repaired.

So let's think about it... What is it that we are always asking for or complaining about? We all want to be happy, we all want to have peace of mind, we all want joy and we all want to have our version of success to come true. But how can we achieve that when we are dragging around all these other things that are of no use to us anymore? Or keeping around things that are damaged and that we are not able to fix? All these things that are basically anchoring us to the same place we are in now. 

Think of life as your house, your home, and all the people that you have grown up with are the things in it. As the years pass and we start to get new things we keep around the house only those things that we tend to use in our daily routines, because those things make it easier to deal with our day to day activities, sometimes the things that are not of good quality will break and we have to get rid of them because there is no way we can fix them, other times something of good quality will break but because it was of good quality we are able to fix it and keep using it for years to come. That's how relationships work, it does not matter who they are with, sometimes you have some that break and can never be fixed no matter what you do and other times you have some that you can fix and they continue to work for many years to come.
But how do we know which ones are the ones we can fix? Well it's exactly like looking at something that is no longer working, we always attempt to fix it first but after trying our best we get the same outcome, the thing just does not work, it won't turn on anymore... It is exactly the same with people, you try to have a healthy relationship with someone and you give them a second chance, you work hard to try and change what the other person is complaining about you but the other person does absolutely nothing to change their behavior. They continue to insult you, put you down and really all they keep causing is pain. They don't work, it does not matter who they are, they don't work and not to be harsh but what do you do with something that does not work and you are unable to fix? You throw it away and buy a new one... Granted you can't buy a new father or mother or sibling but you can certainly learn to surround yourself with better people and you can't do that while you are keeping yourself busy with the same old ones that keep trying to bring you down, while you are focused on fixing the un-fixable you are missing out on the great deals that the store of life is throwing at you.
And with that I realized how life is always trying to give us exactly what we want, what we ask for but we keep trying to go back to the same old stuff that does not work, that is extremely dirty and that we are not able to clean up anymore and that should be tossed away because we are so darn stubborn and think that we can find a way of making it work, but life keeps trying and trying to let us know it no longer works and you need to move on and we keep getting dirty and coming into our house and letting it get dirty after we have just clean it out... It's like buying your old stuff at your own garage sale.
There was a period in my life where I felt like I was losing people, I felt like hey I am all alone and have no friends, my family hates me, and all I got is myself and my kiddo who I have to protect and I kept trying to make it work with everyone that it had not worked before, because they were family, they were close friends, and it kept not working, it seemed like everything I really wanted was getting further and further away from me.
Then I started to see what I had asked for, I had asked for peace and happiness and while it hurt to not talk to certain members of my family, while it was painful to lose them because of their own behavior now I realize that is how life was giving me exactly what I was asking for, in order for me to have peace (basically a clean house) I needed to get rid of the old unusable dirty things or in this case the people that were causing me more pain and sorrow by putting me down and pointing out all the things I did bad, the people that could easily get angry at me and raise their hand at me, the people that had a completely different moral compass than me and that I just knew did not belong in my life because they did things in a way that I just would never accept.
It took some time, just like it takes time to clean your house after you get rid of that old couch and buy a new one, the marks of the old couch remain on the carpet for a few weeks, sometimes months until eventually after going through with the vacuum over and over and over they get cleaned out and they are no longer there, but it happened, and it's still happening.
Sometimes it feels like I have less friends than I did before or that life is keeping me alone for some reason but it's not that, life is getting rid of the old things that no longer work, the things that needed to be replaced and slowly giving me new ones to work on and enjoy. I've seen life surround me with not too many people but the people that life has given to me are some of the best human beings I have ever met, are people that think like me, people that truly care about others, it's like life is taking away all the useless and dirty little things and giving me bigger and better things to make my house even better than before.
When you see yourself "losing" friends, you see yourself losing a job, or going through something that you would call a major change, when you feel like there is absolute chaos and everything is falling apart, think about what you have to do to fix your house, think about what you do when you are cleaning your house, it gets messy at first, everything is all over the place, and then once we get rid of what is no longer useful to us there is a space left for something new, and sometimes it takes a long time to get something new to replace the old because once we clean out our house, once we fix it we don't want to add just anything in it, we want to put something more beautiful than what we had there before and it takes time to find that something. Sometimes we realize that we don't need anything else to fill the space and we end up keeping it as it is and sometimes after we have clean out the old dirty and broken stuff we end up finding wonderful things that we had not paid attention to because they were hidden by all the junk.
So lets do ourselves a favor and lets try to not complain when things are not going the way we want them to go in our life, lets not focus on trying to fix the things that should be thrown away, lets not keep the things that no longer work all they do is collect dust and hide the good things we have that we should be paying attention to or keep us from finding that new thing that will make our lives better, that would add beauty and flow to our lives, lets not try and get that which we have gotten out of our house that no longer works back, if we tried our hardest to make it work and it doesn't then it will still not work, no matter how hard we keep trying. And above all lets make sure that once we get rid of something that is not useful we take the time to clean up the space it leaves behind, because just like you would not put on new clean clothes without taking a shower first you also should never add a new thing to your house without cleaning the space the old unusable thing left first.

Our souls

I was chatting with a friend today and was asked what was a happy thing that happened to me recently, my answer was that this week I saw him shine... I had seen him at work sometime this week and there was this light surrounding him. Believe it or not I know that I was not the only one that saw it, you can always tell when the light of someone radiates on to everyone else, and you can always tell who the source of that light is.
So it got me thinking, or at least put this thought in my head, because long ago someone had said to me the same thing, their exact words were: "You walked in and you were shinning" now the day they saw me I was extremely ill and I really did not know what the heck they were referring to, let alone what the light they saw meant.  As I kept getting more and more curious and reading more and more I learned about auras and the light they give out and I learned about our higher selves, the different planes of existence that people have come to philosophize about, etc etc...
But today I realized that the light they talk about is nothing but our souls radiating through and our souls are nothing more than a little child and just like little children who aren't afraid of anything, who fall down cry for a bit after they get the biggest bruise but then they go and do the exact same thing that gave them that bruise, they forget quickly, they will get yelled at for doing something they are not supposed to be doing but even after getting emotionally hurt by the words of their parents they still come back to them and give them a hug and they forget quickly that we have yelled in anger.
That is exactly how our souls are, they forget and they want to go ahead and try again, they don't remember getting hurt, they don't remember the words that were said or the beatings we got, they just know that the only thing they want to do is go for it, they just want to be happy... It is our human part that remembers everything, it is the human part of us, that physical being with a brain that tries to make everything logical and that learns and remembers sorrow and pain that takes over as we are growing up, we are wired to remember how we got hurt and why, and then in order to protect ourselves we unconsciously decide that we have to go ahead and stop our souls from taking over and we stop ourselves from our soul wanting to do the things it wants. We stop ourselves from loving because we are afraid we will get hurt, it has happened before so why do it again? We stop ourselves from daydreaming because our human side says that the majority of times those dreams will never come true, and so we stop ourselves from doing the very things that feed our souls, our higher self, that self that does not have any boundaries, that knows no bounds and that is all good, the self that comes from a higher being who knows no evil, and when we do that, the light that our souls radiate slowly starts fading... And suddenly yourself is covered in this ridiculous cloud and you start feeling ordinary.
But make no mistake the soul is more powerful than the human in us, it will find a way to come out and shine through no matter what you do to try and kill it, it might be that it shines after an encounter with some stranger and having one of the greatest conversations of your life, at which point you start thinking that life is not so bad, that things could get better, that there are people out there that are good... Or you will get really ill because when we do not feed our souls, which I think are what fuel us to keep going and the soul starts dying out then our life force also diminishes, and so we are found in a hospital bed tied to machines and praying to get better, even if we have never prayed before.
So how is it that we can make sure our souls don't die out, how do we overcome the fears we have all learned through the years, that fear of rejection so you won't hug a friend when they are close only because they might just push you away, or the fear of getting hurt so you stop showing how much you really love another, what about the fear of people leaving you behind and just walking away, so instead you just don't meet anyone else, instead you just stay quiet when you really want to talk about what's going on... All we have to do is listen to it, instead of listening to the logic of our brains, we have to shut that down sometimes and just listen to the voice of our souls, that part of us that is never afraid to take a chance, the part of us that does not remember being hurt but only remembers how happy we were when we were truly loving someone else, that part that does not remember someone walking away but remembers only the times those who walked away where around, and really when our human side remembers those good moments, no one can say that they don't immediately smile.

Stupidity

I recently read a book, The Zahir by Paulo Coelho, in this book one of the characters states: "I saw a comedian the other day.  He said that stupid people should have the word 'stupid' written on their identity card,"....."That way, we'd know who we were talking to.".

That statement above got me thinking about another issue that has been going on lately, DirecTV was forced to remove channels like Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, TVLand, among others.  People are going nuts about this, a lot seem to be so attached to those channels that some have even posted videos on YouTube of their children crying because they cannot watch Sponge Bob, pictures of kids so irritated because Sponge Bob was not on anymore; all I could think about is: how stupid is this? I mean do they realize that there are other channels out there that they can watch other than those channels? Do they realize that there are other things to do than watch TV all day? I wonder if these people ever opened a book. This let me to another discussion, I was speaking about relationships, now I do have to say that I am happily separated and I consider myself single even though I am still legally married but since I have not seen my husband in ages and I have no intention in getting back together with him well... you get the picture. I have always thought that being with another person meant that you shared your life with them, it did not mean that you made one life with that person, that the person was a separate entity, a separate being and therefore that person was always going to be free to do whatever they wanted.  If they wanted to leave, they could; if they wanted to cheat, that was their choice (now it would be my choice if I wanted them in my life after they cheated); they would be responsible for their friends; I figured shoot I don't want a prisoner in my house, I want someone who wants to be with me not because he has to but because he wants to.

I was speaking to a dear friend today who said how she did not allow her partner to have any friends that were girls, so she was not allowed to have any guy friends either and I thought: how ridiculously stupid that is, but to her is not stupid, I guess she likes being controlled in some way or another as long as she can return the favor but who knows?

After all these encounters with that very peculiar and very commonly used word "stupid", I realized I have an entire list of what I think is stupid, according to the dictionary stupid is something that is senseless, that is dull. I reserve the right to update this list at any time,but here is some of what I came up with:

1. Stupid the woman who thinks that by controlling and checking on her husband every 5 minutes she is protecting herself from infidelity.
2. Stupid the man who thinks that by controlling and checking on his wife every 5 minutes he is protecting himself from infidelity.
3. Stupid the parent who thinks he/she is a great parent just because they provide and do what their responsibility as a parent is.
4. Stupid the people who think that by hating someone they are actually harming them in some way.
5. Stupid the people that want everyone to love them, and suffer when they realize not everyone does.
6. Stupid the people that believe their happiness depends on another human being.
7. Stupid the people who think that there is only one path to spirituality and that their path is the only way.
8. Stupid the people that do not realize that we live in a world that is changing every day, and things are not the way they were when they were growing up.
9. Stupid the parent who hits his children and believes that is the only way to teach them that they have done something wrong.
10. Stupid the parent who hits his children for no reason other than because they are unhappy with themselves.
11. Stupid the parent who thinks that putting down his children every day is a good way to build character.
12. Stupid the mother who witnesses the father hit her children and does absolutely nothing.
13. Stupid the man who hits his wife and then says sorry and tells her that he loves her.
14. Stupid the woman who hits her husband and thinks that she is showing him love.
15. Stupid the people who rely on material things to be happy.
16. Stupid the people who think money will make them happy.
17. Stupid the people who worry about the future and miss out on living the present.
18. Stupid the people who worry about the past and never get to live a new future.
19. Stupid those who cannot forgive.
20. Stupid the people who believe that they are entitled to something just because they are breathing.
21. Stupid the guy who thinks every woman is the same.
22. Stupid the woman who thinks every guy is the same.
23. Stupid those that don't want to take a chance to be happy just because they are comfortable where they are.
24. Stupid those who forget their dreams in order for others to realize theirs.
25. Stupid the people that believe true love means the suppression and renunciation of one's dreams.
26. Stupid the people that think marriage means creating a life together and forgetting the life each had.
27. Stupid the people who pretend to be happy in front of others but are miserable inside.
28. Stupid the people that let fear take the best of them.
29. Stupid those that because they are miserable want to make everyone else miserable too.
30. Stupid the people that pretend to like others and talk behind their backs.
31. Stupid the people that stay in unhealthy relationships because they believe is the right thing to do.
32. Stupid the stepmother who thinks she should come before her husband's children.
33. Stupid the stepfather who thinks he should come before his wife's children.
34. Stupid the people that speak without knowing what they are talking about.
35. Stupid the people that just follow because they are too lazy to actually learn about what is going on.
36. Stupid the people that don't believe that there are still persons that do nice things just because they like to do them.
37. Stupid the guy who thinks he is the best in the world because he has a lot of admirers.
38. Stupid the woman who thinks she is the best in the world because she has a lot of admirers.
39. Stupid those who pretend to be someone they are not just to please everyone.
40. Stupid those who pretend to be someone they are not just to grab attention.
41. Stupid those who believe that there is only one way to God.
42. Stupid those who don't believe that the reason God exists is because we believe in him.
43. Stupid those who forget who they are in order to become who they are not.
44. Stupid those that allow others to make them unhappy.
45. Stupid those who think that there is only one way to true happiness.
46. Stupid those who complain about life but never do anything to change it.
47. Stupid those who focus on what they don't have instead of what they do have.
48. Stupid those who never take the time to figure out what they want.
49. Stupid those who think that is too late to change.
50. Stupid those who think it is to late to learn.
51. Stupid those who think revenge is the only option.
52. Stupid those who stop living even before they are dead.
53. Stupid the drug dealer that sells drugs to others because he does not want to actually work.
54. Stupid those that buy drugs in an attempt to forget their problems rather than working towards fixing them.
55. Stupid the people that solve everything by drinking their life away.
56. Stupid those who destroy their families because they only think about themselves.
57. Stupid the guy who stays with his wife or girlfriend while wanting someone else.
58. Stupid the woman who stays with her husband or boyfriend while wanting someone else.