The Power of Thought

If you had to stop and think what the most powerful tool is that you have at your disposal, what would you say? I suggest this tool is our mind. When I speak of the "mind", I do not mean this thing between your ears. How could you think that (pun intended)? I mean this thing that some call the "heart-mind" or we can even say power-center. Since I'm more into Tantra these days, let's call this our gut, located in our solar plexus. Some call this the "seat of the soul." This is what I mean by mind. Confusing, I know! I'm trying to lasso in your physical brain with your intuition and also your heart. All of that. I guess you could also call this your "will" but I think this is a loaded term.

If you boiled down every religion into it's essence and the teachings of every spiritual teacher, saint and guru, I think you would find their instructions to us fairly simple: think for yourself. Now, I think, over the ages, that these teachings have become polluted and distorted with the collective unconscious and with teachings that were not part of the original instructions, if you will.

By that same token, you can easily identify a cult or "bad" religion as one in which they actively encourage their practitioners to surrender their thinking to some "higher authority" which is usually the church or it's pastors. They may say that this is God but who is claiming to be the moral authority or the ones who interprets God's will? Well... usually the church even if they don't explicitly say this. Now I'm not bashing the church or anything like that. I am simply pointing out that you are the best interpreter of God's will for your life. And I generally don't like the word "God", I like more the Universe, universal consciousness and the like. But, to me, they all more or less mean the same thing.

The most powerful thing we can do in this life is learn to think for ourselves. Realize that there is a Universal intelligence that flows through each of us, whether we realize it or not. This intelligence has different expression in different people in different ways. And this diversity of expression is truly beautiful.

Why do we struggle with this? I submit that it means that we must learn to listen to our gut, which is a treasure trove of wisdom for us. If you're like me, we've all had traumas and setbacks in life that make us not only distrust ourselves but create layers of pain around our authentic selves. To get to this source of wisdom means journeying through this pain to get to our voice of innocence. This is why self reflection and a soft heart are so important. We desperately need to embark on this journey and these are two important tools at our disposal. In short, we need to heal.

Once we are thinking for ourselves, we realize that we are sitting on an endless supply, a fountain of knowledge and inspiration. We go within, not without. This isn't just a cliche'. It's instructions on how to live a meaningful, joyful, love-filled life.

If we use this power of our thought and direct it towards creating a life that brings us joy, just think of the potential! It's endless potential. So the question I leave you with is simple: how will choose to use this thought superpower you possess? The choice is yours.

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Photo Credit: Alice Popkorn

Building a Utopia

This is a thought experiment about a concept of our day which has come up: "defunding the police department."  This post is not intended to present an argument for or against this position.  It's meant to merely explore this issue more fully.  I plan to write additional posts like this that explore more current concepts in a simple way.

There are too many factors, variables, emotions, etc. that go into this concept to even mention.  I like to boil things down to their bare essentials.  Instead of getting rid of the police department (which I think is the main intention of this concept), let's get rid of civilization as we know it for our thought experiment.

Let's build our utopia from the ground up.  At first it's just us.  Then we invite some trusted friends.  Everyone knows each other and gets along just fine.  No police needed.  Everyone is working doing odd jobs for our utopia.  Some, however, need to travel outside our village to bring back water and other odd jobs.  While someone is far from their house, thieves outside the utopia come in and steal everything from a house that was left empty.  So, the next time, the community appoints volunteers to keep watch over the empty houses while the occupants are gone working.

Pretty soon, the community realizes these volunteers are very useful in guarding their houses.  But the volunteers also need to eat so they start giving them a salary and they call them the "community watch."  Some within the community watch turn bad and start stealing from the community houses once in a while.  In fact, some members even starts to harass those whom they dislike and use physical force to "stop" them from committing imaginary crimes.

What's the solution in our thought experiment?  Is it to get rid of the community watch?  Is it to maybe to hire fewer of them?  This experiment illustrates a few points.  There is no silver bullet solution to anything.  Every solution has it's drawbacks.  It's trying to minimize the negative repercussions as much as possible.  This also helps boil things down to a more basic level.  Why was the community watch created in the first place?

My opinion is that we often look at the end result of a situation and try to fix things at that level.  However, we need to consider the entire picture.  We need to look at the possible negative repercussions to our solution to any problem.  The best solution is not one that does not have negative consequences but one in which those consequences are minimized.

We can never remove human nature.  We can't out-think it or create a system that completely takes that out of the equation.  Just as some humans are hard-working, some are lazy.  Some are good and have only good intentions and some are dishonest or plain evil.  Fortunately, the truly evil ones are the far, far minority.  Unfortunately, even a minority of bad actors can do a lot of damage.  Good, thoughtful solutions to contemporary issues consider all points of view and all consequences, intended or unintended.  These are problems that have existed as long as there are humans.

There is no silver bullet but only trade-offs.  Let us all be civil with one another, respect other viewpoints and come together in unity.  There are better solutions out there but none of us has the "answer."  It's through working together that we can come up with a better solution.

Photo credit: McMac70 (Flickr)

My Child, You May Rest Now

My child, will you choose to lay down your burdens and rest?
In life, you do not have to carry any burdens.
You only carry what you choose to carry.
My child, why do you still carry them?
You may lay them down now.
Release your struggle.
Give them to me.
Let them go.
Surrender.
Relax.
Rest.

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Photo by Laurene.B. (Flickr)

Living from the Inside Out

I’ve recently been learning a lot about the importance of living my life from the inside out.  It's very easy for me to look at the surface of a situation rather than plumb its’ depths; this may stem from cultural origins or may simply be a symptom of living in a physical world. However, the depths is where the juice is. It's easy to get caught up in the externals: how someone will react, the story around what's happening or anything else that isn’t myself. What I've found is I need to go deeper, beneath the surface.

Why do I have a tendency to look on the outside? Because it takes the focus off of myself and puts it on someone or something else. I will do whatever it takes to not look within. Looking within is uncomfortable and is a more challenging subject for my mind to work with. So I look outside myself instead. This has only so much value, because I cannot control these outside people or forces or events. I can only react to them. This makes it all the much easier to "play the victim" rather than take responsibility for my actions.

What's beneath the surface? Everything. We live in a world that is illusory. To the scientific minded, this assertion is impossible to prove. It has to be experienced. But, once you experience it, you get it and your mind is satisfied.

Our thoughts and intentions co-create our reality. Some see this as a naïve statement or as one that blames people if their reality is negative or undesirable. Of course, not everything negative in our lives is our fault. There’s an interplay here between external and internal. This is an empowering statement that serves to give us control over our lives. However, once again, this needs to be experienced to be understood.

When we are dealing with the externals of a situation rather than looking within, then we are operating at the symptom level rather than the level at which a cure can be found. We can only go so far towards improving an undesirable situation when simply treating symptoms. We have a far greater impact when we are working from within and getting to the root of the problem.

In an undesirable situation, we want to look within and see what our part is. We want to become centered and peaceful and resolve any afflictive emotions surrounding the situation first. We live life from the inside out. We want to deal with our inner state and make sure we are getting right with ourselves before looking outside of ourselves.

The truth is that our inner transformative work ripples outwards and actually changes the physical world. Many of these changes are subtle and difficult to verify or quantify. However, the situation is changed nonetheless. Some of these changes are in reaction to us. People see our attitude or can sense our energy or simply are affected in subconscious ways. Other changes are miraculous.

It is easy to give into the temptation of engaging our scientific brain to fix a situation by looking at the effect level rather than looking within. Our mind tells us “It's only practical!” It says “It’s the only method that makes sense." Remember, the mind prefers to work with the known rather than the unknown. Looking within does not make sense to the mind as this means that we give up our perceived control of the situation. The truth is we never had control in the first place. Looking within is surrendering to the unknown and changing the only thing we had control of in the first place: ourselves.

This is the secret that our minds cannot grasp and that we need to be reminded of. We need to live lives from the inside out. We need to deal with the cause rather than the effect. Remember, the mind will try and trick us, but there is no real good reason why we should work any other way. We need to stay strong, be courageous and face ourselves. Working from the inside out is the only way that we will experience real, lasting change and miraculous results where we are overjoyed and transformed in the process.

A Way Through

How emotional pain and suffering can be used as a catalyst to make us more conscious and can be seen in a positive light to get us to where we need to be.

Pain and suffering do not last forever.  They can't as it's impossible, once we realize what is at the root.  What causes pain?  What causes suffering?  I am, of course, referring to emotional pain.  Both of these conditions rely on an ego.  They need some sort of defined image or idea about what life should look like.  A simple definition of pain would be when life does not match my own idea of it.  Suffering, then, is the ongoing, repetitive attempts to make life fit into my ideas about it.

What Am I Expecting?

I am experimenting with a new podcasting platform that makes it easier for me to get podcasts out.  Here are the last couple of podcasts I have created recently.  Enjoy!

Differences In Religion

What Am I Expecting?

Past, Present and Future

The new motto or focus of my life is to stay grounded in all areas, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, etc. When I've thought about the "power of now" or staying in the present moment, it's been more of an attempt to almost "stop planning" or "stop looking at the past." While all of that is well and good... I mean we should just "be present." I completely agree 

with that.