The Heaviness of Thoughts

Today, I am light in my thoughts in that I am not particularly preoccupied with any given thought. And this is a privilege, for it means that my needs are taken care of for the day. If they were not taken care of, of course, perhaps I would be thinking of that more. And those thoughts would weigh on me heavily.

However, many people who have their needs taken care of still deal with endless, unhelpful thoughts. Often, we invite a lot of this heaviness in. For example, with the news, media, commercials, nonsense discussions, toxic individuals, and on and on. We open not just our ears and eyes to this useless information, but we open our minds to it, and it becomes a virus that infects us.

An issue with many of our thoughts is that they become giant monuments that we carry on our shoulders. All the thoughts you have ever had or been exposed to are like a giant statue you must carry with you everywhere you go. And the strange thing is that we stop realizing that we carry these with us. We think they are a part of us, but perhaps they are not. Maybe we have chosen to carry them around.

You carry these ideas and add new ones every day, and so every day, you become more sluggish, thinking that you know more but actually know less. In thinking we have accumulated facts and information, we believe ourselves to be smarter, more knowledgeable, or wiser, but we rarely are. What grows more than our knowledge is our mental anguish, as we invite the mental virus to infect us.

And so sometimes, there is nothing wrong with forgetting it all and retreating to a mental space of quiet.

But how do we get there? To tell you to meditate (or exercise or do yoga, etc.) may be futile. Either you do meditate, or you don’t. Either you know how to quiet the mind, or you don’t. Either you are conditioned to attend to thoughts and magnify their importance and obsess over them, or you are not.

It’s not that these patterns are unchangeable, but this change takes commitment, and it takes an awareness that the thoughts may have just led to self-poisoning rather than to clarity and knowing.

Clarity is in the thoughtlessness, where we are not dealing with cobwebs in the mind. You can attend to the few worthy thoughts when you clear those cobwebs. And there are just a few.

Most thoughts are draining, not resolving anything, not leading anywhere, so I have learned to let them go.

Yet, to claim that letting go of thoughts leads to pure bliss or happiness is false.

Aiming for clarity and wishing to reduce unnecessary thoughts can also be exhausting. I find that for every 100 thoughts, either the rethinking of old views I’ve had or being exposed to new information that leads to certain thoughts, over 99% lead nowhere. Yet, I still prefer to move away from those thoughts, rather than to absorb them and concern myself with them.

Think of it. Whether you’ve had one thought per day or a million, what is the difference in the end? I would pity the person who had a million of them and revere the one who only had a single thought, as long as that single thought had been worthy.

Ultimately, we must choose the thoughts that can lift us up.

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If you enjoyed this post and want to learn some of the worthy Thoughts, you may wish to read 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life. (on Amazon and other major retailers).

I Have Arrived

As surely as I was born, I am here now.

Just as life’s goal for me then was to arrive, it is such now.

And just as the goal of that arrival was to live, it is such now.

And just as the goal of birth was to arrive at death, it is such now, too.

And thus, life’s goal is to be born, to live, and to perish.

The commonality among these is that the goal is to arrive.

One arrives at birth, here where one was before not here.

One arrives at life, present at a moment that was before not here.

One arrives at death, to life after life, to what was before not here.

But how can we arrive at the here and now, when perpetually reminded of all we lack?

How can we arrive when we anticipate where we will be, at every turn?

How can we arrive when we see some things as good and others as bad, and tend to aim for more of the good and less of the bad, perpetually.

How can we arrive when arrival is seen as no better than any other thing?

Let’s speak of the paths that lead away from arrival, of which there are many:

It is the idea of not having what someone else has. Then you are wishing and striving, and you have not arrived.

It is the idea that you need to get somewhere by doing something. Then you are living a life of doing that leads to more doing, and you have not arrived.

It is the idea that you must do one more thing, and then you will be done. Then you are doing one more thing, which leads to doing one more thing, and you have not arrived.

It is the idea that a good person must do this or that, or have this or that. Then you have created a formula for living that has no end, and you have not arrived.

It is the idea that you are the one who knows the right way to tell others and lead them to something. Then you presume to be a chosen one, and without you, the people will not know what to do, and you have not arrived.

It is the idea that you must produce a certain amount to be worthy. Then, there will always be more to produce, or an unexpected problem or illness will make you feel worthless, and you have not arrived.

It is the idea that to fill your mind with certain ideas is a worthy path. Then, there will always be newer, more precise ideas to learn, making your old ones unworthy, and you have not arrived.

You may wonder, is there really a way to arrive?

That, I do not know.

I have not arrived, and I do not know who has. It may be your neighbor, schoolteacher, priest, or scholar, or it may be none.

But the paths outlined before us in this life do not lead us to arrive. The paths made available to us were created by those who never arrived. This is something to consider.

There never was a path to arrive at anything, not one that we were consciously going to locate and set out on, anyway.

In striving for anything, this is an acknowledgment that we have not arrived and probably never will. To strive is to aim to be where you are not, which shows you have not arrived.

To arrive would mean to have let go of the need to grasp or let go.

It would mean to let go of the need to advance or retreat.

It would mean to let go of the need to help or hinder.

It would mean to let go of the need to participate or spectate.

It would mean letting go of the need to create or preserve an image of yourself or the desire to abandon it.

It would mean to let go of the need for praise and be unconcerned with criticism.

It would mean to let go of the need for success and be unconcerned with failure.

To arrive would likely mean to find it in you not to be concerned with the idea of arrival, as it is just another idea. In striving for arrival, like anything else, you would just be proving the fact that you had not arrived.

Say to yourself, “I have arrived,” and see that you do not believe it and that it has not happened.

Or say to yourself, “I have arrived,” and see that you do believe it and that it has happened.

And upon arrival, if you see this as an accomplishment, you can see that you have not arrived. You will feel the need to meet that accomplishment, again and again, proving that you have not arrived. To pursue something is to prove that you do not have it.

I

HAVE

ARRIVED

Dance with the Present Moment and Experience Real Life

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life. ― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

In my life, as I try to grasp the present, I’ve found that many triggers jolt us away from the Now.

The triggers are omnipresent, forever invading. We don’t even notice them. Life can quickly become one trigger after another, dragging us away from what life was supposed to be.

Then, when real life happens, we tend to see life itself as a distraction. When really, we couldn’t be more wrong. The things we focused on were typically not real life at all. And the things that distracted us were real life, calling to us.

Real life was the rare human moment that someone wanted to share with us. But when it finally happened, we failed to realize it and shrugged it off.

It was the birds singing, but we were too busy to notice. It was the stranger on the street who was having a bad day and needed help. Real life was the sunrise, sunset, and the stars above. Or the face of your loved one that you hadn’t bothered to truly look at.

But when these things happened, we thought they were the distraction, not real life itself.

The distractions from real life were in the job that we do, where if we ceased to exist, someone else would fill the slot within 48 hours. It was the negative and judgmental words that we yell at ourselves in our minds. It was the worries about the stock market going up or down. It was the concern over the most negative news story of the day.

We thought we were living real life in these times, but we were not in the present moment here. Instead, we were upset about the past or worried about the future or focused on our made-up problems. Or perhaps, we were just distracted by nonsense.

As we become so-called mature and modern adults, we get to a point where whatever it is pulling us into the Now becomes the thing that we wish to avoid. The Now falls into the background. We somehow manage to escape the unescapable.

Adults have escaped from the present as if it were a disaster to be averted. But we weren’t meant to escape the Now. It’s like trying to outrun your shadow. Humans today are disjointed from their own shadow, living in a world of illusion when they become disconnected from the Now.

So why do we seek to escape it if this cannot be done?

The present may be too powerful for us to handle. It is a zone where anything could happen. The plans you had may work, or they may come crashing down. Your feelings may be validated or dismissed. A revolutionary idea may help you find success, cause you to have a massive failure or even both.

But rather than give in to the power of the present moment, we often wish to take power back for ourselves.

Our inflated egos make us want to hold on to the need to control, plan, achieve, and predict.

Some mysterious Now couldn’t possibly be at the reins of this life – no, we mortal and temporal humans feel that we are the ones in power. This is the illusion that we work on maintaining all our lives. Our lives become not life but rather the illusion of one.

I was once driving to work, and I saw a disheveled man with a chaotic, long beard. He was swaying his hands almost like a musical conductor. He seemed to be guiding traffic and buses to go where they were going. This man did not work for the city. He had a wild smile as if he was having the time of his life. Somehow, I understood what was happening. In this man’s mind, he was controlling the universe. He directed the traffic, the pedestrians, and perhaps even the animals. In his mind, he had orchestrated it all.

But of course, they were all doing what they wanted to do, and he was pretending to have made it happen that way. He felt the power and the control but had none.

Sometimes, that feels like the analogy for what humanity has become. We insist on maintaining control over that which is actually out of our hands. We are happy to take the credit when it works in our favor, but any time something goes wrong, it was out of our hands.

Yet, just maybe, things were always out of our hands. I can’t force my heart to beat, but it continues to happen. Until it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, it’s because it was never in my control, to begin with.

Maybe we are trying to control a universe that is actually out of our hands.

We find it difficult to let the Now be whatever it will be, to give us whatever it has to give, or to take from us whatever it wishes to take. And so, every day, we are resisting that present moment, as we have made it into the enemy.

We are not in the present moment because we have made it the enemy of our lives. We have succumbed to the triggers all around us.

Someone could spend a lifetime documenting these triggers that lead us away from the present, away from the Now.

When we have scheduled our lives away, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have plans and perceive nothing beyond them, we have resisted the present moment.

When we convince ourselves that we are failures and get stuck in self-pity, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have rejected a chance occurrence just because we did not expect it, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have labeled with language that which words cannot confine, we have resisted the present moment.

When we needed the security of knowing the outcomes of everything we may do, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have insisted on living by the patterns we have always lived by, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have denied our wild, spontaneous, and free side, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have failed to see the beauty in the beautiful, the sadness in the sad, and the wonder in the wonderful, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have gotten lost in thoughts rather than lost in the experience that is life, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have been convinced by false thoughts and ideas that do not stand up to reality, we have resisted the present moment.

When we have confused our temporary selves, emotions, and problems with being more important than the universe, we have resisted the present moment.

We do these things. I do them, you do them, and perhaps everyone I have ever known does them.

Seeing these triggers for what they are can take us even further away from the present, strangely enough. In seeing them, we start to notice them, label them, think about them, and interpret them, and all of this takes us further away from life.

But if we give ourselves to the Now, then there is nothing left to resist, and we become a part of that Now.

We don’t need to put much effort into this, as effort often works against the now. Going with the tides of now is effortless, but because we have resisted this for so long, it may appear to take effort to get there.

The Now is happening to us, whether or not we are ready to take it in and accept that. The power is more in the present than it is in us. We are predicting it, reacting to it, and explaining it, but are we experiencing it fully and living it? That is another matter.

Rather than grasping at the present, which cannot be grasped, it makes more sense to dance with it. We can focus on becoming aware and in sync with real life and strive to find a piece of that now. Even if we can’t have all of it, we can find some of it for ourselves.

The alternative is to live a life outside of the now. What kind of life is that?

Living longer is a focus for many, but it doesn’t mean much if we didn’t actually live those years. What percent of our lives took place in sync with the Now? That may be a more interesting metric to shoot for.

I’m not sure that being in the present is a skill or practice. It may be as simple as letting go of our ego, of our need to control and direct this thing called life. Rather than living the illusion of life, we can let it go and truly live.

Humans do have great power. But how great is that power when our lives are temporary, and every loved one will die? How great is it when everything built will fall, most of our predictions are wrong, and much of our lives occur in the imaginary world of ideas?

Our true power was in our ability to acknowledge the power of the present and to become one with it.

Join me in a never-ending dance with the present moment. That is the goal of this life if there ever was one.

If you are interested in learning more about the Present Moment, you may wish to read 7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By: A Guide to the Happy, Peaceful, & Meaningful Life.

“Don’t Walk in My Head with Your Dirty Feet”

“Don't walk in my head with your dirty feet.”
― Leo Buscaglia, Living, Loving & Learning

I just finished reading Living, Loving, & Learning by Leo Buscaglia, who was a professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California. I enjoyed the book very much, and I think it would greatly benefit society if we could all read it and apply the teachings inside.

In the book, Leo Buscaglia tells the story of traveling to Japan and meeting with his “marvelous Japanese teacher” in a garden of giant bamboo. Buscaglia had learned many things in his travels and search for wisdom, and so he was excitedly sharing all of this with his teacher. He kept going on and on, wanting to impress his teacher with all that he knew.

Suddenly, the normally very peaceful teacher struck Buscaglia in the mouth, and he said:

“Don’t walk in my head with your dirty feet.”

I have had the experience of the Japanese teacher many, many times, where I felt like someone was introducing unhelpful and unnecessary, and perhaps even hurtful thoughts to me. And sometimes, these people go on and on. And I can’t really get away, not tactfully, anyway. I may feel stuck, at the mercy of this person’s wandering and untrained mind.

Different ways that people may walk in my head with their dirty feet are if they go on and on in a way that is angry, hateful, bitter, negative, boastful, worried, obnoxious, overly dramatic, self-obsessed, and so on.

In my life, my mind does sometimes experience negativity, and I may discuss that and introduce it to the world at times, but either I aim to keep it concise and be done with it, or I aim to teach others how to overcome those negative thoughts and experiences. Of course, no one is perfect, but I feel that this is better than rambling on with negativity and introducing it to others around me without any purpose behind it.

Of course, even if someone does “walk in my head with their dirty feet,” I would not strike them because of that. But I suppose the teacher in the story above wanted to make the emphatic point that if Buscaglia thought he knew so much, he should know better than to brag and ramble, especially when they were surrounded by beautiful scenery and a peaceful environment. And the teacher himself must know more than the student in this case, so perhaps Buscaglia should have been open and listening, rather than imposing his own thoughts.

This month I’ve been thinking of how we often let people walk in our head with their dirty feet. I think we invite it in. On the ride to my wife’s workplace, I often turn on the radio. And either it’s music that I don’t even like, or it’s about car crashes that have clogged the roadways, or some other bad news about how things are getting worse. Otherwise, if I get on social media or check the news, I seem to be inviting people or ideas into my head as well, often with their dirty feet.

Lately, instead of dealing with the radio, we sometimes ride our bikes together (with no radios), or I turn off the radio, and we either talk or sit in silence. It’s not so bad.

I’m making an effort to be more at ease with the silence. It seems most of us find the silence undesirable and prefer to have an endless chatter in the background, whether it may come from the TV, social media, or even the people we surround ourselves with. The reality is that often, these are not providing us with helpful and positive messages. They are the dirty feet of today. Ultimately, we tend to invite it in because we find the silence unbearable.

We seem to prefer dirty feet in our heads, over the silence. But it should be the other way around.

The silence may remind us of our own feet, which are often dirtier than anything else. By this, I mean that in silence, our mind wanders negatively, self-destructively, perhaps. This is especially true for the untrained mind (I discuss how we can train our mind in many ways in this post.). And so, in efforts to avoid our own feet or untrained thoughts in all their dirtiness, we tend to invite others to walk in our heads with their own dirtiness.

Books are a great resource for me because if they introduce ideas that I think have a dirtiness, where they are unnecessary, hurtful, irrational, wrong, or charged with negative emotions, I can close the book and move on.  

If I’m online and start reading negative comments on a social media page, I sometimes feel compelled to keep going and keep inviting more of these dirty feet into my mind. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but it happens. Once I get started, it’s hard to quit. I find it’s best to avoid it altogether.

Instead of getting sucked into all the unnecessary negativity, I believe it is important to stay positive.

And none of this even accounts for the advertisements that find us everywhere we go. They instill fear, worry, anxiety, depression, whereas they claim to be fixing these things.

Sometimes on the radio, I hear something like this in an overly concerned tone. “Have you been suffering from A and B symptoms? (Imagine any common symptom such as headaches or stomachaches.) Then they claim that it could be more serious than you think. Then they go on about how they can save you from your chronic illness with a particular medication they are selling.

Talk about “dirty feet.”

One day when that happened, I told my wife – “I really have to change the station at this point. There is plenty to worry about in this world, without me needing to think that a minor and common symptom could be a chronic and serious illness. Obviously, if we feel unwell, we see a doctor. I do not need a commercial to make me worried about my health.”

As another example, often politicians focus on all the ways that the “other party” is ruining the world, which provides us with a stampede of dirty feet. I often hear of the idea that either this party or that party, or this country or that country, or these people or those people, or this idea or the other idea, or this belief or the other are ruining the world. This is on such a regular occurrence that it seems normal. Certainly, these are dirty feet that have invaded our minds.

So, how can we wash our feet, metaphorically speaking? How can we wash ourselves of this emotional pain, harm, and negativity that we tend to spread onto others?

Maybe it’s a phrase worth stating more often – “Don’t walk in my head with your dirty feet.” Maybe that can help us to stay cleaner and teach people to be more cautious with the thoughts and words that they choose to share.

I’m retraining myself to say things in my mind like, “It’s no big deal.”

Sometimes I have this sense of urgency of needing to check my emails over and over because someone might send me a message. And I need to remember, “It’s no big deal.”

Do I really need an inbox of 20-30 messages per day? It’s like dust building up in my home. Now, I find that I respond less often. I mark more messages as spam if they are indeed spam. I unsubscribe from lists more often if I don’t really care about the messages. I used to get back to people on the same day. Now, I tend to take 4-5 days or sometimes more. It’s not because I don’t have the time. It’s because nothing is that urgent. The vast majority of the time, nothing is “that big of a deal.”

The world somehow finds the way to keep orbiting the sun, regardless of what we do.

I can’t think of a single email I’ve received in the last 5 years where it truly needed to be answered within 24 hours. Sure, in some cases, not answering quickly enough could have cost me a bit of money or inconvenienced someone, but it would never have led to some great catastrophe. It would never have really mattered in the grand scheme.

Even in the few times, someone may have contacted me about a dire problem in their life, often people resolve those problems on their own, or new problems arise and they forget about the old ones. I wouldn’t be so egocentric as to think that someone truly needed my advice at a particular moment to save them. I may have helped, but I imagine their lives would have continued without me. If nothing else, they would have found someone else to give them advice if they truly needed it at that moment.

Today, think of how you can wash your feet and how you can keep them clean.

It may be as simple as holding back a bit and questioning whether you really need to state everything on your mind. Will some of those things add needless worry, fear, desperation, or sadness to the people around you?

To make a true, long-lasting change, it may help to meditate, self-reflect, or otherwise look to make a positive change in your life. These can be changes that you work on implementing gradually if that is easier for you.

And also, think of how you can keep other people’s dirty feet out of your head.

Can you leave an environment, or if this often happens with someone, can you tactfully tell him that he is not helping with his comments? And perhaps, he is making things worse.

Today, let’s keep our feet clean so that we do not dirty the minds of the people around us. And let’s encourage others to keep their feet clean, so they do not dirty our minds.

Who Can Truly Teach You?

“Believe me: It is no teaching and no instruction that I give you. On what basis should I presume to teach you? I give you news of the way of this man, but not of your own way. My path is not your path, therefore I cannot teach you. Within us is the way, the truth, and the life.” – The Red Book (Liber Novus) by C. G. Jung

This is a powerful insight and one that I have been contemplating in my own way. This Thought suggests that no one can truly teach us, and in the end, we must find our own way. Ultimately, anything that we are taught is likely to apply to someone else, perhaps of a different time, context, and situation. In that way, the teachings we are given have a way of leaving us behind if we do not adapt and find our own way.

My current way is to read as much as I can and absorb as much knowledge and understanding as possible. Yet, some of the most advanced thinkers I have known of (some personally, and some through books such as Jung’s) have spent great deals of time searching for their own way rather than looking beyond themselves for it. Perhaps they haven’t merely searched but created and cultivated their own way of seeing and being. They have reached a stage of not needing the teacher and not even needing to teach, necessarily.

Of course, a key part of thinking involves knowledge, and where do we get our knowledge from?

In reading, or in learning generally from the world around us, we can see different types of knowledge. There is anecdotal knowledge – meaning that there is some information that pertains to a particular person at a point in time.

There is scientific knowledge – meaning that some information has been found to apply to a particular group of people, and we can figure that this information is likely to transfer to another similar group of people. For example, research conducted on smokers is likely to apply to other people who smoke, even those who did not participate in the research.

Then there is spiritual knowledge – meaning information that has somehow surpassed the need for the anecdotal or scientific understanding. With this kind of knowledge, we come to know some deeper part of ourselves, the universe, or others without necessarily being able to explain it in words or relationships.

You may be surprised to learn that often, none of the above types of knowledge will give you certainty. Anecdotal knowledge may apply just to particular cases and not universally. Scientific knowledge may apply generally and not necessarily to your specific case.

Spiritual knowledge may apply to only the individual spirit, yet this spirit may be interconnected with other spirits or the universe more deeply. Theoretically, spiritual knowledge can transcend our finite being, and tap into something much deeper and greater, perhaps even infinite. Yet this knowledge is not easily put into words and cannot be conveniently revealed to anyone else.

Jung is interested in spiritual knowledge and seems to have lost the need or desire for anecdotal and scientific knowledge, which has failed him on his quest for true spiritual understanding.

Jung clearly believes in a soul, which is the idea that we have an eternal element within us. Given this idea, it makes sense that one could gain deeper truths within rather than searching for them in a universe that is in constant states of change. I have read other works which state that scientifically, there is no proof or even evidence of a soul – and you can make of that what you will and figure out where you stand on this issue.

Some assume we have a soul, and others say there is no evidence of one. What do you think?

Do you have a soul? Do you believe the idea is misguided and does not exist? Or do you think we have lost our souls, and need to find them once again?

Are you part of an eternal, infinite realm that connects you to the past, before you were born, and the future, after your death, and perhaps to alternate realities and dimensions? Or are you just here, just now, just limited to what we see? Personally, I think it is fun to speculate on this. However, I am also a pragmatist, and I like to focus on ideas that can help to learn something valuable and not just get stuck in speculation.

On a practical level, I believe that there is some true knowledge and understanding to be gained by looking within, rather than spending all our time captivated by the whims of our external reality, of the happenings around us.

But who can teach us to look within, and what does this even mean? First, this has to be something that we wish to pursue. We have to get fed up with the transient noise that everyday life brings us. Is every day just some new trivial drama to attend to? Some chores that must be taken care of? Some enjoyment gotten from a silly task or screen? A search to satisfy our need for more, whether it be more money, things, or the adoration of people we barely know? Is that what we are here for, or is there something more?

Then we have to get fed up with teachers who have led us astray. The teacher who taught us to want a particular thing, solve a certain problem in a certain way and not in some other way, see some as good and others as evil, follow arbitrary rules, and so on. Perhaps some of the teachings led us to make more mistakes, question or dampen our own spirit, or ultimately regret having been taught.

I have found that the best teachers are the ones who allow you to create your own path, make your own mistakes, and form your own distinct footprint on the world.

I admit, I sometimes wonder – what would have happened if I had never been taught? Would I have learned more through my own curiosity, will, and searching? Or would I have become a hopeless case, an ignorant fool? Ultimately, I would have found my own way, just via a different route. The key is to teach our students how to find their own way, and not limit them and make them need to have a teacher for life.

When we finally get fed up with the fact that our daily patterns, teachings, sources of information, and everything in our lives is not truly teaching us anything worthwhile, then the only place left to look is within. You do this by being quiet with yourself. Meditating, or not. Simply sitting in quiet, thinking about your life, your wants. Then you think, “Why?” Why did you do things this way and not that way? Why did you want this and not that? What did it ultimately matter when you got that thing you wanted? Or what did it matter when you didn’t get that thing you wanted? What was the difference in the end?

What were the things that ultimately mattered? Was it the things as they happened, or your beliefs about what those things meant? Was it the experience, or the interpretation of that experience?

What are you thirsting after? It’s always something. The next TV show. The next book. The next teacher. The next restaurant. The next place to visit. The next thing to buy that will solve all our problems (but it never does).

But do we know ourselves? Soul or not, do we know who we truly are? Are we here to fall in line and be told who we are by others? Or to discover our own true path in life?

I can’t teach you who you are. I can’t even teach you how to figure out who you are. I am the teacher who doesn’t know how to teach and doesn’t want to teach, but maybe that is the best teacher to have. I’m not sure anyone else can teach you who you are or how to find who you are. No one can be your teacher for this. The universe itself must be your teacher.

I wonder: What are your fundamental truths? By this, I mean the things you know to be true and do not need a pile of evidence for. You simply know them. Maybe this is something that points you toward your soul. Or maybe this is something your soul is pointing you toward.

Where is your spiritual knowledge? Have a conversation with your spirit, and learn about your true self. Not the wants, but something deeper. You may have to invent a new language or create a new way of perceiving. Perhaps your spirit has its own unique way that cannot be easily explained or thought of in mere words, relationships, and images. You may be surprised that who you are in your daily life is not at all the spirit within. And that is fine. This experience is just learning, and discovering your spiritual knowledge, your true self.

If it helps, release yourself from the pressure. Sit in silence, and do not pressure yourself to go in any direction. Do not question and interrogate yourself and judge yourself. Just let yourself flow out from yourself, like a river, a stream. Pour out, and stop holding it all back.

Our human ways in modern society are walls, dams, holding back our spirit’s way. So this may be a journey for you, a new path that you need to set on.

Today, I Stand Still (and I ask, “Who are you?”)

I was wondering if just sitting still would be the highest moral ideal to strive for.

For the most part, all our human activity and busyness is actually just making things worse for the planet – requiring more food, fuel, production, and creating more waste. And so, a high moral ideal may be to sit still and do nothing all day.

We all assume that a hard worker is valuable, but perhaps just as valuable would be the one who did nothing.

It seems that everywhere we turn, we are being urged to do more, accomplish more, sell more of our own widgets, and buy more of other people’s widgets - of course, this relates to The Busy, Entertained, Exhausted Cycle that many of us get caught up in. The fear that strikes us deep inside is that we must operate at the highest level of efficiency and productivity, or we may someday learn that the widgets we helped create have a higher net worth than we do.

Actually, when we reach an artificial intelligence higher than our own, then it is logical that we will have produced something with a higher value than ourselves. Imagine when we have an artificially intelligent machine that can build improvements upon itself, and then that one creates new improvements, and so on.

Is our destiny to render ourselves obsolete?

Speaking of value….

What is the value of your home? Not in dollars, but lives.

Our homes are worth too much, to where the bank will happily take it from us when we cannot pay. The home is worth more than the lives inside, it seems. Out of the house, out to the street if you cannot pay. Wherever you go, no one knows, no one cares. Stripped of a home, then of humanity and dignity. This is the fear that drives us to do what the boss says, whatever it is, no matter how backward or senseless – we do it and live to be human another day. That is the hope – to cling to the empty shell of our human selves, just one more day, and hopefully, everything will turn out okay. The prior sentence is written from the perspective of what someone may feel when they have been worked to the bone, only with the mere hope of keeping their home.

It’s quite a downfall to do what is expected of you, just not quite as efficiently as a well-oiled, artificially intelligent machine, and then to find yourself without a home.

Sometimes…….

I want to clear my mind and pretend for a moment as if every message that came my way during the day was actually just a trivial bit of nonsense. I want to pretend as if everything everyone said were a virus that had been repeated ad nauseam out of habit and not for any reality of the content itself. That way, I can comfort myself that everyone has just been repeating silly little lies, and there was no reason to waste any of my brain space on it. If I could ignore it, then maybe I could focus on figuring out what actually mattered on my own. Then I ask – but is this pretend, or is this actually true? Am I just pretending that things are as they actually are?

I’m a writer, and my books are in paperback, and I wonder, am I just contributing to more dead trees out there? Could some animals have lived and sheltered inside the trees that ended up becoming my books? Will the knowledge in my books be worth more somehow than these trees? Is it possible for something to be worth more dead than alive?

When I pump my gas, sometimes I imagine that I am pumping my tank full of dead and decomposed and liquified dinosaurs. And then I think, maybe that is our fate too, for some distant alien civilization to find us in time and to use our remains to fuel their spaceships. (By the way, even though I imagine dinosaurs, actually the fuel is made up of other plants and lifeforms from before the ages of dinosaurs.)

I have meandered, but here is the Thought I started the post with: I was wondering if just sitting still would be the highest moral ideal to strive for.

I thought perhaps I would take the high road today and sit still. And then I realized this is what I do every day, since writing and managing my business is mostly done sitting down and with stillness. And doing the same thing we do every day in habitual fashion couldn’t possibly be the highest moral ideal, could it?

So rather than sit, today I am going to stand and meditate in stillness.

Today, do something still, even if it’s just for five minutes. Then ask yourself, is this going to make things better or worse for all of humanity? Then ask yourself, what would happen if all humans sat or stood still for a full 24 hour day? Would we go mad, or sane, or both?

In stillness, perhaps we can let go of some of the insanity of our ways, and just for a moment perceive the actual truth as it is.

In our stillness and lack of productivity, would the world notice that we hadn’t helped produce a new widget? Would the world starve more because of our personal absence from it, or more from the absence of our widgets?

When we meet someone new, we often ask what they do, not who they are. Is that because we all know the widgets that we make (e.g., I make books, or at least the writing inside them), but few of us truly know ourselves or our own value independent from what we are making?

I once had a great fear that a stranger would one day ask me, “Who are you?” and I would stumble and blabber like a drunken fool, spewing incoherent syllables that led me nowhere, and the stranger would laugh and walk away.

Do any of us really know who we are?

As we approach the new year, imagine that a stranger has walked up to you and asked, “Who are you,” with a smug grin. He seems to know that you couldn’t possibly produce a worthy response, despite all your travels, book learning, friendships, and widget-making. How do you respond?

WHO ARE YOU?

¿QUIÉN ES USTED?

QUI ÊTES-VOUS ?

QUEM É VOCÊ?

CHI SEI?

КТО ТЫ?

你是谁？

Looking Forward to It

We should have something to look forward to every day. Today is just an ordinary day for me, and so I thought this would be a good day to think up what I am looking forward to. The point is not to consider things I may look forward to for next week or next month – it should be for today.

Having something to look forward to makes the day better, more fulfilling, you feel more energized, and you get more done. The benefits are endless, so this is worth doing daily, or at least periodically. Also, if you struggle to come up with anything to look forward to, it is a sign that you should make some changes in your life.

I want you to consider what you are looking forward to today. Perhaps seeing my list below will help you to come up with some ideas.

I am looking forward to listening to music while I work

I have always enjoyed listening to a wide range of music, and this is something that I like to do when I am working. I usually put the volume low so that it does not disrupt my focus. Today I am listening to Kimbra’s album “Vows.” Many people may not be aware, but I have quite an eclectic taste in music. I find something enjoyable from almost every genre.

I am looking forward to picking up my wife from work.

The ride home is only about 10 minutes, but it feels great to see her so that we can spend the evening together. On the ride, we often discuss problems that came up during the day, either with my work or with hers, but this is our way of staying caught up on each other’s lives. Sometimes we also  discuss things we are looking forward to doing. Our topics of discussion tend to vary widely, but I suppose that’s something that we enjoy about each other’s company.

I am looking forward to writing today’s post.

This is a bit of a cheat, since I’m literally writing it right now. But this morning when I was getting ready for work, I was looking forward to writing the day’s post. I don’t have a specific plan for every post. Usually I just come up with an idea that I find important and want to discuss with you, and then I write it. I enjoy writing, thinking, sharing, and exploring new ideas, so of course I usually look forward to writing my post for the day.

By the way, I also look forward to hearing what you think about today’s post, if you would like to comment on it below.

I look forward to hearing from friends or family

A close friend of mine who is living in Paris now just connected with me on social media and sent me a message, so I was quite happy with this. These small ways to stay connected truly make a difference in my life. I have learned that it is important to stay connected with friends and to make the effort to maintain important relationships in our lives.

Some of the most frequent people I connect with, aside from my wife who I live with, are my Mom, my brother, Arthur (friend who has commented on the site many times), Dave (friend and co-author of Question Yourself), my readers of course, and a variety of other family and friends. I usually don’t know who will contact me, but I am honored to have enough close connections that on most days, someone will connect with me.

I look forward to the unexpected.

Most of my day is planned out. I know what I will do and when, and what my goals are. However, I have learned to look forward to the unexpected. Sometimes this brings something pleasant, and sometimes it is just an obstacle.

Even when new obstacles seem overbearing, they are actually manageable if we keep a calm head and evaluate our options.

As most of my day is ordered, I actually look forward to something new that will come my way that I didn’t see coming. Often, this will be my day’s challenge, and I am not someone who will shy away from this.

A tip I recommend is allowing some blank space (or time where nothing is scheduled) in your day so that when something unexpected happens, you actually expect it and can deal with it more smoothly.

Enough about me – Get a piece of paper and fill in the blank – Today, I am looking forward to: _________________

(Or of course, let me know in the comments below if you would like.)

It Runs Both Ways – What Flows Out Flows Back In

Today when you find yourself blaming someone else and absolving yourself fully of any responsibility, remember that it runs both ways.

When you get upset that a friend has not called you in a long time, remember that it works both ways. Perhaps you have not done your part in making this friendship work. Perhaps you have only thought of picking up the phone at times and not actually done it.

When you do your work halfheartedly and can’t wait until it’s time to go home all day, every day, then how can you be surprised to be met with this same halfhearted attitude everywhere you go? Perhaps you go to your boss, and he doesn’t seem to care about you or your life. You go to your kids, and they don’t care. You go to the store and ask for help finding something, but the person who works there isn’t concerned with your problems.

When you are lonely, and you want someone to be there for you and support you, ask yourself – what was the last time you were there for someone in need? Did someone want your help at some point, and you were not fully engaged in helping them? Perhaps you offered to help, but it was obvious you were not truly interested in being there.

When you are toxic and only see the negative in everything around you, pointing out the flaws and problems in all that you see constantly, how can you be surprised if the people around you become bitter and only see the negative in you? How can you be surprised when all they want to do is avoid you?

When you walk in the streets, distracted by your phone, and a vehicle almost hits you because the driver was distracted, how can you be upset by this? Sure, the driver of a vehicle is responsible for driving safely and paying attention. But isn’t someone who is walking around vehicles also responsible for walking safely and keeping his distance from vehicles?

When you are mad that all the people around you are selfish and only looking out for themselves, ask yourself – what have you done that was motivated by truly helping someone else, and not just to benefit yourself? And for whatever excuses you come up with, understand that the people around you who have acted selfishly probably have the same reasons.

When you expect or ask something from your subordinates, and you don’t live up to that standard yourself, you cannot be surprised when they lose respect for you. If you are going to ask the people below you to do something (e.g., to arrive on time), you should meet the same standard or better for yourself.

When you focus on punishing all the people around you for minor mistakes and wrongs, what else can we expect than them wanting us to be punished equally any time we would commit a minor mistake? You may argue – “No, this is different. I have a good reason.” But did you listen when other people had their reasons?

When you want to control someone else’s way of life because you don’t think they are smart enough or capable enough, how can you be surprised when someone who views himself as superior to you wants to do the same to you?

Whether poison or love, anything that flows out of you ultimately flows back in.

A Universe of Thoughts

As I continue with I. C. Robledo’s Thoughts, writing a post every day, I have been left feeling that I have a Universe of Thoughts inside me that are not fully known even to myself.

And this has made me realize that we probably all have a Universe of Thoughts within us, and it seems much of that is left unexplored.

Perhaps much of our Thoughts are left dormant, like seeds that never germinated and never amounted to much.

What I mean by a Universe of Thoughts is that just as you have a rich life of behaviors and feelings and desires, we tend to forget that there is also a whole universe of thinking happening in our minds.

In writing out my Thoughts, sometimes I feel that I am arriving at new ways of thinking, processing, and figuring things out. This is usually how writing our thoughts works.

Yet, much of the time, I feel that these Thoughts were always within me somewhere, just waiting to be expressed. And of course, my thoughts are not fully my own, as they result from all I have learned, my experiences, and my interactions with people.

Today, I want you to consider what Universe of Thoughts you hold inside you that perhaps you are not even aware of.

Surely, part of what I am getting at here is what is referred to as the subconscious mind. There are parts of the mind we are aware of, which we are conscious of, and parts which we do not fully know the subconscious side.

When I write these posts, I have been entering into a mode of flow, where the words flow out of me as if I am tapping into a Stream, as if these were thoughts that were always in me, simply dormant and waiting to be expressed.

I’m not sure that I express my thoughts, record them, or even “think” them so much as I am capturing them. Imagine a radio signal - the radio isn’t thinking and speaking to you. It is just capturing the message.

Rather than looking outward at the world around me, I am exploring inward. I am turning the focal lens of my mind onto itself. I am seeking to explore the boundary between my subconscious and conscious mind. The parts that were perhaps once subconscious, I aim to get into words and express them for your benefit.

Clearly, we all have hidden sides of our minds that we are not fully aware of. Yet if we search enough, we can actually explore these subconscious parts of ourselves and make them conscious.

This type of exercise, where you capture the uncapturable and express the inexpressible, is similar to recalling a forgotten memory. Have you ever done that? Have you ever “forgotten” or not thought about something in many, many years, then suddenly it came to you? You took something hidden in a dark cloud inside your mind, and you brought it to light.

If you have done something like this, you know it is possible to shine a light on hidden parts of the mind. Just because it is difficult to do at first does not mean it cannot be done.

When you explore your mind and yourself enough, you can eventually intertwine your conscious, subconscious, and full mind together, start to flow like a stream, and then capture that Stream, which is your Universe of Thoughts.

The Universe of Thoughts is just your conscious and subconscious minds put together. Once you see these Thoughts, your next challenge will be to understand and articulate what you see there. And what you will see are your full conscious and subconscious experiences and all that you have ever seen, known, experienced, and felt.

This is the Whole self that is you, not the fragmented parts that we normally think up. We categorize and label ourselves to try to make sense of ourselves. But there is a part of us that is Whole and cannot be categorized. It is the True You.

Isn’t it interesting that we can see an image of the actual Universe while knowing very little about what happens in it? Similarly, you can see an image of your brain (which seems to house your mind), yet you can know very little about what is happening there. Sometimes seeing visually isn’t enough. You have to learn to “see” with your mind in new ways that were never taught. With this new kind of seeing, you may learn about your own mind.

What is inside your Universe of Thoughts? There are Thoughts of Truth, Wisdom, Understanding, Intuition, and Feeling, and Love.

I believe we all have volumes full worth of knowledge and books, or videos, or any media stored in our minds. It is all there, usually uncaptured, untapped.

How can we actually explore our Universe of Thoughts?

This is not a skill that is ever really taught. It is intuitive for us to explore the world around us. We learn to read, watch videos, perform any actions we need to, think about what is in front of us, or even concepts discussed in a book.

But how good are we at exploring inward and seeing the thoughts, feelings, and experiences happening internally? Because these are not easily captured in a book or video or some measurable way, we forget about this experience inside. We may even take it for granted or feel that it is not especially important. Keep in mind that reading or learning about someone else’s experience is not the same as fully understanding your own unique human experience.

There is great difficulty articulating your inner experience, as we may not even have the words to capture the experience fully. You may find yourself inventing words or concepts to properly articulate your inner mind and life.

At the end of the day, our Universe of Thoughts is just scratching the surface. It is just one single part of our Personal Universe of Being that we have access to (which would include Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviors, Experiences, Desires, Beliefs, Values, etc.).

Consider this: If you don’t have access to your own mind, life, thoughts, experiences, and beliefs in a fully conscious fashion, then what does all the rest matter?

If we do not know and understand ourselves, how well can we possibly understand something outside of us?

Everything expressed in today’s post was something that was forever inside my mind and had not been expressed. All of this flowed from my inner mind (or a part that is intermixed with conscious and subconscious thinking), so I know that it is not fiction, that it is coming from my True Source of Being.

If you want to access your Universe of Thoughts, start capturing (or recording). You can do this in a journal, audio, video, or even just by talking them out with a friend or family member. Don’t allow yourself to stay stuck on the surface of things. If you find yourself having conversations that run the same course as they always do, then you have not gone deep enough.

When you start tapping into your Thoughts more deeply, you may explore uncomfortable ideas or memories, or you may realize that you had stifled parts of yourself to appease someone or society. You may wonder about a lot of assumptions you made in your life. You may begin questioning more.

For example, why is it that every time I hear this particular word, I get angry? Or I get sad? Why would a single word have that effect on me? If you haven’t had such thoughts, you may relate to having a particular negative or even positive reaction to someone you only just met - why would that be?

What is it about You (e.g., your thoughts, beliefs, desires, experiences, values, etc.), that makes You this way?

But rather than just accessing memories, or ideas, or regrets, you may eventually tap into your own way of seeing the universe. You may start to understand yourself and why you think a certain way, why you believe a certain thing, why certain things are meaningful to you and others are not. You may explore deeper and deeper until you can eventually read yourself as a book.

Eventually, you will have volumes of your own Thoughts and Being inside your mind. They may also be in physical form as if reading a book right in front of you because you will be tapping directly into the Stream or Universe of Thoughts.

You will start to see that there is a Universe inside of you that you can explore at will. You will move beyond the surface, and dive into the Deep.

Eventually, you can break down your own mind, and when you deconstruct it, you can reconstruct it to be whatever you want or need it to be. Discover the rules that make your mind what it is, and you will be able to see that things could be different than what they are.

None of this is easy, and I don’t know how to teach you to get There other than to write this post that has been written. First, it was written into my mind. Then I tapped into it. Then I wrote it here for you to see.

I am not the Source – I just managed to capture the Thought.

Take a Breath

Take a slow and deep breath in and out right now and see how it feels.

It feels good. We should do it more often with conscious awareness.

Taking a breath can help avoid some tricky situations, as it provides an action that gives you a few seconds to relax and stop reacting to what is happening to you as if you were a machine.

I think we could all use this reminder to take a breath. Perhaps you’ve heard it before. Perhaps someone has told you to do this, and you thought it was silly. Today, try it out anyway and see what happens (especially if you didn’t do it above):

Take a Breath

Today, before you respond to hate with hate, take a breath.

Before you respond to toxicity with toxicity, take a breath.

Before you respond to someone who exaggerates or misrepresents the facts by doing the same thing yourself, take a breath.

Before you allow yourself to get triggered by the statements you read online, take a breath. And if this happens a lot, maybe take a break from visiting those sites.

Before you make someone feel inferior or as if they are not important, take a breath.

Before you think you know it all and that someone else knows nothing take a breath.

Before you feel the need to get back at someone who wronged you, take a breath.

Sure, life isn’t always that easy. But sometimes, we are just making things harder than they have to be. Sometimes we can feel like we must react and respond to everything happening around us, but that isn’t true.

Keep in mind that getting into heated debates with people is not a game with any real winners.

We have to be willing to take a step back when someone makes a hurtful comment and think:

• Does the commenter seem genuinely interested in having a calm and reasonable discussion? (He should not be obviously trying to provoke a reaction). If yes, proceed.

• Does the comment have some truth or basis in reality? If yes, proceed.

• Am I capable of having a reasonable discussion with this person? If yes, proceed.

• Will I know when to walk away if this ends up being an attempt to trigger me into getting angry and upset? If yes, proceed.

These are straightforward questions to ask yourself. If you cannot answer yes to all of these, do not get involved with people who make hurtful or potentially triggering comments. What is the point in walking into situations that will make you angry, upset, and feeling foolish?

Many of us have become obsessed with needing to be “right” and lost sight of whether being right even matters. If you “win” an argument by being toxic about it, then no one learns anything. You will end up becoming more set in your ways, and so will the person you argue with. Nothing is accomplished – in fact, it makes things worse somehow.

So the next time you feel the need to be right, take a breath.

Anytime someone does or says something that may have been intended to provoke or upset you, take a breath first.

Take more breaths in your day – nothing bad will come from it.

If someone asks why you are taking breaths, tell them it is to create a pause in between thought and action, or action and reaction, so that you can see and act with clarity. Encourage them to do it too.

Think – what would happen if the entire planet took a moment to take a breath at the same time? It would be a moment of peace and happiness, wouldn’t it?