Rest into the Changes

How many of us are scurrying around, glorifying the busy schedule and saying yes to everyone but ourselves? And if we were to fully analyze this, how many of us are doing this to escape time with ourselves? A dreaded window with no one to be with to distract us from the real reality, that it all comes back to us. All of it. Both lightness and darkness.

We want to share our experiences with others in the world, yet the only permanent way to regain center and allow forth our evolution is to first master the silences and moments alone. Develop a strong and disciplined inner world, then, share that with the external.

When we take the time to allow the stimulus we receive on the outside to integrate into a full response on the inside, we give our souls the most nourishing ground to grow from. This is how we transmute the experience into an expansion and continue to become whole.

This is how we understand, neutralize triggers and clear away any karma so that new and better things can be received. Once something is understood, it changes.

If we are walking around, turning left and right before our heads even catch up, we accumulate scattered energy and further fragment its pieces all around us. Like a drunken sailor on the inside, the Soul struggles to walk straight while the Mind on the outside controls... Just a little bit more, one more effort, go, go, go! Don't stop, you made promises, you have commitments! Get up like a soldier, stop questioning and do your day. Just like yesterday, just like tomorrow. Go faster, and ignore the problems.

And at the end of it all, we lose ourselves. We lose the lessons, the whispers, the mirrors reflecting back the gifts of insight so that we can evolve. But life evolves around us anyway, there are Greater Forces at play, and they will catch up to us if we do not know how to stand strong and firm in our need to ground. In our need to put ourselves first.

Getting there is uncomfortable, nobody enjoys the racket of the mind when they first begin to meditate, or be alone. Few enjoy getting to know their habits so intimately, and discover that perhaps they are human. Addicted, sad, needy, lonely.

Those are the parts we need to understand and love. Love and transform. We are nobody and somebody just like everybody else, and just like everybody else we deserve to be happy within. And we become happy by creating the peace we need and deserve when we understand what is getting in the way. Then we can release it, and call in the good stuff. Then we can appreciate it and not attach to it when we receive it from others.

Some people receive validation from the external, perhaps by wearing flashy clothes, highlighting aspects of their bodies, overperforming or people pleasing. When challenged, the problem also remains outside of them. And it is a shame, there's a whole University of life they are missing on!

Some others instead have found the way to receive validation from the internal. Here, no matter what they do or wear or say, they are aligned with their true sense of value. They know the only source of joy and pain can come from within, and they defend it gracefully.

H.H. Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet once said, "To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else."

Start small, take a nap if you feel overwhelmed, try a meditation. Remove one thing from your calendar. Spend time with yourself to understand what it is you believe you are getting from others in all of this noise, that you can give to yourself. Approval? Control? Happiness? Don't forget to give yourself permission to feel guilty at first that you are 'escaping a responsibility'. Of course we need to function and be useful members of society. Life moves, and you move, even when standing still. When we find stillness, the Universe surrenders. Everyone will be okay without you for a little while. I promise. Taking a step back from the busy currents of life is the only place to charge into the next change, and serve others better.

A Trip to the ER

Good morning and Grand Rising!

Within minutes of waking up today, I found myself in the most ridiculous predicament. As I took a q-tip to my right ear (I know, I know- not recommended anymore), the cotton part fell off into the canal and as I tried to remove it, it went deeply down to a place I, nor the pharmacist could reach it.

I am now at the Emergency Room, and what an experience this is proving to be. I arrived and the stretcher before me had a person who had peed themselves, the people here all have their own unique stories. From all walks of life: this is the real microcosm of the world. This is the real representation of a city, in this case Milan. An older gentleman reading his newspaper, a homeless man possibly sleeping here for lack of alternative, the Ethiopian couple on the phone with the embassy, the Latin American woman with colorful sneakers. Someone with a broken arm, someone without shoes, another person on a stretcher, And me; with a ball of cotton in my ear.

Hardly an emergency, I wonder how much longer I will be here.

It sort of smells like feces, I am trying to ignore it because on the bright side I am sitting furthest away from it and I can charge my phone from this part of the wall.

Overall I feel a very immense sense of gratitude for my life, this stark realization that I was living in a bubble. A beautiful bubble of positive vortexes of happiness and attractions to the things that work for me. I hardly remembered how difficult life could be. The spirals we can go down if we don’t stop ourselves from slipping further and further. And help is needed.

Thank you life, for bringing me here today to see. Whatever this teaches me further than this moment, I welcome it.

Gossip

The one who notices, is the one who shifts.

It's easy to get caught in people's stories and versions of reality. When people serve us a platter of their own interpretation of a script, the unsuspecting mind says thank you, and drinks it up as truth. If the truth is ugly, we might even say, wow thank you for warning me! Instead of, ''why would you drag me into this negativity?''.

Uncertainty reduction theory teaches us that people have an inherent need to reduce uncertainty at all costs. This is where anxiety stems from, and other sufferings like craving, the need to know the answers to a future outcome whose constituents we have little control over.

If we lack direct information there is a gap that is ripe to be filled by the information of other people's stories. Information we didn't think we needed. To compensate for the digression of accepting unsolicited news, which on some level we are conscious of, we seek ways to embrace this information, when really, the person who is playing us this muzak had the choice to grow peaceful instead.

I'll make a concrete example. Bob and Mary had a spat, so Mary spoke to Sarah about it. Sarah is not a fan of Bob, so she calls John and tells him all about Bob's wrongdoings with her own spin on things with good intention, as she truly believes, for whatever reason based on her personally triggered history with Bob, that he is not a good person and others must be warned. She also wants to make sure John remains on her side in case Bob tries to tell his story. John who had previously been neutral and marginally involved with Bob, suddenly has information that makes him question him. Now John is distrustful of Bob with little reason to justify it. Shame because prior to this neither of them had any beef and perhaps they could have been great friends, or collaborated on a great project together.

Using gossip as an exchange or bonding tool to get ahead for manipulation to get what we want, talking about the juicy negative with someone, the other person gets excited about it, embedding that negativity into an associated sense of positivity and reinforcement, which promotes the negative behavior that they tell each other that they don't want to do. But these actions which are energetic actions actually boost up the activity. The vibration in these things are low and it's a trap to get caught up, getting too much into them and forgetting our mission, allowing our belief systems to be polluted and moral compass off kiltered by allowing such information in.

Walking a path of light, means not having all the answers, but remaining firm in our virtues. It can be uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to tell someone to stop involving us in their drama, it's not easy to be the one to say ''I believe you are perpetuating your own pain, stop involving me on what you could be preventing right now. You have the ability to transform it and everyone can win.''. It takes courage to even walk away when such a person does not accept our response. But! We must use our voice if it's called for.

Let's close those gossip cycles and the drama to make space for purity and mission. Distorted and manipulated information drown out love. Which resources do we wish to energize?

Let's set forth on a path that brings lazer light to moments of darkness.