For the First time

I haven't really written in this blog for quite some time and it's probably been almost two years since I shared this blog publicly on face book. I went through a period of confusion in my life and I didn't have a whole lot to share until recently. My older posts are a bit less resonant with where I am at now. Lately I have felt compelled to share my own perspective based on my recent experiences. So, here I am.

I've been working with a neuroplasticity based program to help me through chronic fatigue syndrome. I really don't know what will happen since I've been on the program for only three plus weeks now. Yet, I am seeing incredible things already in this short time. I've come to understand this entire premise on such a larger level that affects so much more than this physical body of mine. So, I want to talk here today about illness, contrast, duality, positive thinking, creation, and consciousness and how all of it plays together in our lives and how victim hood is so vastly mis-understood. There is no victim nor was there ever.

Have you versed the spiritual landscape recently? Have you seen what's out there within the new age sector? Have you encountered the vast array of fear based perspectives from every possible point of perception of the wild imaginative human mind? How does it all make you feel? Does it make you feel like pulling your hair out of your head?

Well, that's ok. You're not alone. The incessant splatter of self improvement teachings and spiritual "ascension" teachings and notions of enlightenment, are enough to make any person feel as though they are insignificant and lacking. A year ago, my interest had exploded in so many different areas. I explored past life regression and reincarnation and many other areas of spirituality, and they all served wonderful pointers on my path, until I finally realized that most of it no longer resonated with where I am at now.

There's literally only one thing in my life that matters more than anything right now. One thing. And that one thing is......JOY. Finding anything in my life that brings me JOY. There are so many guidance tools while we are here to let us know if we are on the path of alignment or not alignment. It is when we are truly feeling this incredible deep, profound sense of Joy that we know we are living life from an authentic place of who we truly are. When we are unhappy, miserable, joy less, it's a sign that we are living life based on the story we have created through our thought patterns, in other words.....living in time.

For so long, I believed that finding joy would be brought to me when I evolved to a certain spiritual status beyond this "primitive state" I am currently experiencing at. I believed it was outside of myself through some spiritual force running through the universe. I saw all of the flaws within myself as something that needed healing and improving.  My body being out of whack was a sign that I had not evolved to a high enough spiritual state in order to overcome this. I was a victim. Trying to piece together how one thing related to the next thing. Trying to comprehend and analyze those incessant thoughts playing over and over and over in my mind. This same story played like a record in a circular motion, that was so hypnotizing, so gravitational in its pulling, like a black hole sucking me in, that anything beyond that record player seemed incomprehensible and nonsensical and scary. Each thought played out unconsciously with a strong emotional charge triggering my nervous system and in turn keeping my body in anything but a homeostatic state. I was believing a false story that I had literally created through years of my life, and this story was manifesting as illness in my body and externally as well.

Folks, we have no idea how powerful we are with our thoughts and beliefs and simple statements such as 'I CAN AND I WILL' contrasted with "I CAN'T AND I WON'T'. Two simple statements, yet with the weight of our entire lives settling between and underneath both of them. Whichever one we believe, will ultimately manifest in our lives. The teachings on law of attraction are so vastly mis-understood because of the generic premise that often undermine the basis, and many people simply interpret it to mean "If I think it, it will come". No, that's not how the law of attraction works. The law of attraction is operating every second of our lives. But, it is all based on beliefs. Our thought patterns are called "patterns" for a reason. They are the same habitual thoughts playing out in our experiences because we've thought them so many times, we have now taken them to be true. This is what beliefs are. Every belief we hold on to, carries a vibration relative to it. This vibration plays out incessantly in our experience. Every one of us, has a unique vibration that we enter into life with. That is the vibration of our natural Spirit. Yet, that vibration gets changed constantly throughout our lives here on Planet Earth when we take on beliefs that are not resonant with who we truly are.

We are not human beings trapped in a world of victim hood. Nor are we here on this planet because we are cycling through some nonsensical, incomprehensible outside forced cycle of reincarnation.

In my own view, and only my own view, we are powerful creators who choose to come here out of love. Love for experiencing this vast landscape of Planet Earth through the lens of consciousness and nothing other than consciousness. Love for the opportunity to create something new. Every experience contributes to our eternal, infinite expansion. What is expansion? Expansion is not a hierarchical process of evolution. Within the mind of a child, there is always an opportunity for another game to be created, if the child gets bored with the initial game. Therefore, there are endless and infinite games, this child can potentially create with her own imagination. Just the same with Source, there is infinite terrain to explore within the mind of imagination. There are endless perspectives to explore. Each perspective offers a different viewpoint for Source to explore itself and create. Therefore, each perspective contributes to the infinite, eternal expansion of this Pure Awareness. Expansion is endless, because creation and exploration is endless. How it could not be in a reality built on imagination?

If we stopped each day and became aware incessantly of our thought patterns through meditation and/or through constant mindfulness throughout the day as though our lives depended on it, and really came to see what thoughts and beliefs we were holding on to, we would come to see something truly remarkable. We would come to connect with this vast Space of Being and we would see that our thoughts are playing out like a story over and over and over again within this space of Awareness, and the reason they are playing out that way, is because we have come to identify with them as "who we truly are" and therefore we continue to give them power as truth. We have allowed those thoughts to become ingrained in our brains as neural pathways and as the dominant vibration we are projecting in our every day realities. None of it and I mean none if it is true as I have come to see in my own life.

Who are we then when all of the stories continue to fall away?

There is only one "thing" that is left over and that is this Existence itself. Not even "I AM", but simply 'AMness". The 'I' is a unique perspective of this AMness, but this AMness is all there is. It is pure, divine, all encompassing, all allowing Space and is what we were, are, and always will be regardless of how lost we find ourselves within the story of our minds. There is only utter perfection in this vast space of Being. Completeness, wholeness, needing nothing other than to Be as it already is, beautifully, divinely and lovingly as its nature.

This AMness is merely creating this entire landscape through its own imagination infinitely over and over and over again through an infinite cycle of life and death and an infinite number of perspectives in order that it can create something. Creation is the nature of expression. Awareness can do nothing other than simply BE. Yet, through the mind of imagination, Awareness can become "something" and as well, anything it so chooses. And therefore, it imagines itself to be a separate character with its own free will to create anything it so chooses. Reality is ultimately an empty canvas of consciousness until, we (the perspectives/characters of this one awareness) create this reality through own desires. We are those characters within the mind of this one Awareness that has been given full free will to create life as we choose. Yet, if we go deeper into our experience, we come to see that we are also this vast Pure Awareness as well at our core. There is really nothing more to life than simply exploration, through experiential creation....infinitely. Folks, WE are the ones who give life meaning. It is through our own belief systems, where we manifest reality. Life is simply a play of imagination; an empty canvas until, we as the artists, create something beautiful, and we are free to dream up any reality we so choose. Reality is like a piece of plastic, just like our brains. Nothing is solid, and objective. But, all malleable to our own beliefs.

 If we understand the context of what contrast truly is, we could have a greater grasp at what reality is and a greater understanding as to how to live life from a place of joy. The duality of physical life brings with it contrast. Contrast is the spring board of experience for our own desires. We could not possibly experience anything without the birth of a desire and also without the experience of the opposite. Traumatic experiences and chronic illness as difficult as they are to assimilate from our limited human perspectives have such a vastly different understanding from the higher perspective of the soul and the Higher Self than the limited perspective of the human left brain which always believes itself to be separate from everything else and therefore sees itself as a victim and sees life happening TO it and is incredibly resistant to experiences that don't 'feel good'. Of course, the limited human mind, does not realize that we, ourselves, are literally creating reality. Every experience we come to have here on on this planet is always an opportunity to experience our true nature through the limited vehicle of human life, and create something beautiful from that conscious place of joy. Life itself with its contrast are the spring boards of desire for us to experience the direct contrast that will enable us to live out this desire through our creative exploratory potential. However, this only happens, when we can become conscious enough of our thought patterns where we realize we don't have to EVER align with a negative thought again or believe a negative thought. We literally never ever have to indulge in those negative thinking patterns if we choose not to, if we can become aware enough to see that all thoughts are just thoughts and nothing more. And when we can start to do that, we can actually change the cellular and genetic structures of our bodies.

Our human animal or survival mechanism is not supposed to control us (although it thrives on control and hates to lose control). We, are the conscious experiencers who, through our own ability to connect with that deeper space of Awareness, can always take the reins of these human vehicles and literally change the entire cellular and genetic structures of these bodies (epigenetics) through our own powerful thoughts and beliefs.

Positivity is the nature of Source Awareness. Positive thinking is mis-understood in pop spiritual teachings. Many teach that negative thinking is wrong or bad and that we should only think positively. Granted, positivity has proven itself enough health wise, where there is no question the incredible impact it has on our lives. The reason it has this impact on our lives when used properly is because the true nature of Source is always unconditionally loving. However, there is no negative aspect of our experience either in reality.

Negative thoughts/illness/ negative emotions are beautiful intended experiences as they are the contrasting tools that we use to find our way "home". Without contrast, we could never experientially know ourselves in the same way, we know ourselves as simply Light itself. Light only knows Light, because Light is all there is. Yet, Light contrasted with darkness brings an entirely new dimension of experiential knowing for this Light. It experiences itself as something perceived to be "not itself" in order for it to create "something", when in reality that "something" is just a figment of imagination as there is nothing but, pure Light or Awareness in reality. Everything within that Light is just a creation of its own mind. But, that aside, Light cannot create within only Light. Light needs something other than Light to create a perceived "other". Darkness is that contrast that offsets Light and offers it the greater opportunity to explore itself in an entirely different type of way and create something beautiful from there. And most of all, offers the Light to allow its true nature (as Light) to shine through within the darkness in any opportunity and any experience. It's just a game that Light plays with itself. Not because it needs to grow, not because it needs to learn. These are simply human ideas we add on. Light is already perfect and whole as it is. Look within yourself and dis-identify from your thoughts and find an imperfection. Anything you come up with.....is just another thought. Light simply does this perhaps because Light is curious about what it might be like to be something OTHER than Light for an imagined temporary blip of 'time'.

So, when you are so consumed with negativity, you don't realize you are not the darkness itself and therefore, any idea of "choice" seems lost. But, this is part of the game. Even a negative thought is simply another opportunity for us to embrace lovingly those scared, fearful aspects of our inner child (the ego mechanism), holding it like a child, rocking it softly and soothing it, and understanding most of all, where those negative thoughts stem from without actually going into those thought create realities, and understanding that they only stem from a survival mechanism always looking out for our best interests, a survival mechanism that is pertinent to our physical existence. This is how we let the Light in. And yet at the same time, you'll notice, those thoughts always stem from fear. It's the human mind mechanism of trying to control, afraid of losing control, afraid of being insignificant, always feeling lack. This is simply the human animal mind. But, we are not that. We have taken on this persona by believing these thoughts for so long, instead of waking up from this mass dream of consciousness and taking control of our lives by realizing, so powerfully and in such a liberating way, that we don't have to live that life anymore!

My own illness through chronic fatigue has allowed me to see that self love was the greatest aspect of my experience that was lacking and a potential greater theme as to why I got sick in the first place. I omitted that inner pain and did anything to get away from it, because I saw it as something 'wrong' and "the enemy". Yet, I didn't see its value in allowing me to create this life I am currently living. There is no enemy. All negativity is an opportunity to embrace a different point of view. Understand, when I say embrace pain, I don't mean indulge in negative thinking patterns, but instead, lovingly approach those thoughts from an understanding place, from a place of a nurturing mother. Embrace those feelings within the body without putting attention on to the thought pathways.

 Now, when negative thoughts come up, I am learning more and more to accept them and love them, but most of all, not indulge in them. It's a hard process for me for sure, but I have never been as dedicated to this as I am right now. My physical life here is constantly changing from something I once deemed as "impossible" to something I now view as "inevitable" in a good way through constantly becoming aware of my thought patterns, breaking thought patterns that are based in fear, separation and lack, and lovingly accepting them, and aligning with new patterns that are more aligned with my true nature......which is always joy and positivity. I have and will once again get consumed within the story, but I know it will be less and less. I see no reason to live any more of my life from any other place than a place of joy. I am staying further and further away from material that brings fear into my life and that doesn't align with me and sticking to material that empowers me and resonates to the core of my Being.

Our true nature is this space of Pure Awareness. Within this space anything is possible. It is entirely up to us to create the best reality we choose for as long as we are here in this temporary blip of a human life. You are literally not here to do anything other than create a life that brings you joy. Any other teaching that claims otherwise is based in its own conceptual deception and belief system. You are perfect, beautiful and whole already. Simply allow yourself to realize that! So, why not make your life into something wonderful? That's all we need to do while we are here.

And yet through all of this, there is a background space that is unchanged and never will change. This is the ground of being. This is who I truly am. This is the space in which this entire dream is taking place. The space within which the apparent free will of this apparent separate entity takes place. I am the soul who is creating this reality and making choices, and yet, I am the space of awareness through which this creation is taking place as well which makes no choices, but to simply allow with love. It all starts with realizing......everything is always.....OK. When you make it ok.....you realize there is nothing that is not ok.

The further and further away from the story I get, the more I realize how life looks completely different as I look to create an entirely new story for the rest of my physical life here. When I step out of those thought patterns, it's as if I am experiencing who I truly am..........for the first time.

Letting Go and Pressure

The title of this post is kind of lame as I could not think of anything better to label it. My entire perspective has shifted so drastically since I first started this blog. I actually went back and deleted some of my older posts because they just no longer resonated with me on any level.

So much has been happening in my life since the last time I posted here. I've had a very difficult winter dealing with chronic fatigue and other health issues and it's been very stressful for me in trying to come to terms with all of this, understand the meaning behind it, understand how to address it, and understand how to incorporate it into my life going forward.

Interestingly, the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with passing a kidney stone. I had an 8-10 mm stone that was trapped in my ureter. It was THE......and let me repeat that THE most intense, worst, god awful pain I have EVER experienced in my life. I thought I might be dying. I was alone in my apartment. It was a Sunday night. My parents were on vacation on a cruise. I had to call 911 which I've never done before.

Earlier that day, I was walking around a hardware store and my chronic fatigue came back and started stressing me out again. Later that night, I was in the ER, doped on pain meds and I didn't give a flying fuck whether or not I was going to be able to work the next week nor did I give a flying fuck about my chronic fatigue. It was like the kidney stone attack provided me with a temporary reprieve from obsessing over my other health symptoms (pain meds helped). The next few days, I granted myself permission to lie in bed on pain meds and just watch TV. I took off the whole week from work (I had no choice being in such intense pain and doped up on pain meds) and it's interesting. When you finally give yourself permission to let go, surrender and accept the position you are in, everything else falls away.

Ever get really sick with a flu or bad cold? All you can do is rest and just let go. You don't obsess over being sick, because you know that it will pass. I knew this too with the kidney stone. Perhaps the pain meds helped a bit too, but it was a really cool process for me to just allow myself to simply let go. Letting go is the first step towards acceptance of anything in life.

Now while I am still trying to pass the small remnants of the stone, I am no longer in that "surrender mode" and I am again focused on my health going forward and I feel some stress creeping up again. It's almost like the pressure was off of me for about a week and now pressure creeps back in. Pressure has been the focal point of my life since I was a child and it stems from many many sources.

I have MUCH more to write about in regards to neuroplasticity, epi genetics and consciousness in the near future, so stay tuned......

Transformational Dance

Last night I went to a "Transformational Dance" meetup group in Manhattan. Transformational Dance is essentially a form of 'ecstatic' dance which I'll explain more about.

Considering the first train I was supposed to catch was cancelled due to track work, I had to take a later train a half an hour later, which meant I was going to be late for the event. I was already a bit nervous and unsure of what to expect from this event, yet excited. Therefore, I didn't want to come in late and potentially miss mingling with people and missing out on anything early on during the event.

I arrived about 15 minutes late. When I entered into the event room, everyone was doing a form of stretching/letting loose exercises and making very strange "release" sounds. Understand that I had no idea how to dress for this event. Therefore, I wore jeans stupidly, while everyone was dressed down, including some people wearing pajamas. Therefore, it made it a little difficult to do the stretching exercises with jeans on. Regardless, the exercises involved crawling on the ground, and making any kind of noises we felt like making including growling noises or animal like noises. I was kind of "thrown" into the fire immediately after arriving late, so I was bit uncomfortable crawling around the floor and making cat noises into people's faces at first, but with so much laughing going on with all of us, it made it so much more fun.

Then, we started dancing. This type of dancing does not involve any prior knowledge with choreography or even rhythm. It's a form of ecstatic dance, which means, freely expressing yourself around the dance floor while music is playing in the background. There is no thought involved. It's strictly movement by feeling. It was so incredible and empowering, to be able to move around with other people on the dance floor, each of us doing our own thing, going in crazy directions, with no judgment at all. Incredible does not even describe it. I felt strong emotions surfacing with the combination of expression and music playing in the background. Some other dance exercises involved dancing with partners. I even danced with another man! It was beautiful. A little strange, but such a warm feeling of love from each person to each other.

We then had to find a partner and ask the partner if they had any injuries. I found a female partner for this. Then, we proceeded to help 'loosen' each other physically by gently moving random parts of each other's bodies (completely non sexual). So, basically, arms, legs, neck and slowly glide the person on the back, along the floor. Very relaxing, if you don't think too much. I found this to be a bit awkward, when I was the one who was being 'loosened'. First of all, I have a hard time letting go in the first place, especially feeling pressured to let go with another person standing right next to me! I wasn't sure whether to make eye contact with her either. She was a nice woman and neither of us knew very well what we were 'supposed' to be doing to be honest. So, I found the eye contact part made me very tense as my muscles tightened up instead of loosening, and I kept looking away as dancing with a female partner completely platonically for some reason felt very weird for me to make strict eye contact for extended periods of time and I realize this is likely a result of my own conditioning and a belief that eye contact implies 'sexuality'. She had very powerful blue eyes as well. Something I took notice of with myself within my body, and will continue to be aware of in the future. I noticed that when I am sexually interested in a girl, I can make extended eye contact for long periods of time un-interrupted and I will often be the one to initiate it! However, when it's platonic, I at times, feel a little awkward making extended eye contact with people. There is a 'gazing' event through a similar meetup organization that I plan on taking part in, in mid October.

Anyway, the event was incredible. We did a number of other dance sessions which were a lot of fun and the night ended with us receiving and giving reiki to each other. I only received and did not give because I did not have a partner at that point and the organizer was the one who performed reiki on me, but it was very relaxing.

I made a couple of friendly connections. The re-lating aspect even with the few men that were there, was nothing I had ever experienced. It went from "tense" to "freeing" by the end of the night to be able to interact with other men in a loving connected platonic way.....without judgment most of all.

I definitely plan on going to another transformational dance event in the future. It's a wonderful stepping stone as part of a spiritual practice of truly feeling your self authentically and bringing that out to connect with other people.

Spirituality is all about authenticity. All of the other stuff is irrelevant. A true spiritual practice is one where we go within ourselves and allow who we truly are to Be. A good portion of my life was lived in ego, in manipulating others and in fear. Much of my interactions were based on the notion of 'hiding who I was' so that they wouldn't 'discover me'. I would always sit in the back of the classroom out of fear of being seen by others. I wanted so badly to fit in, that I put on an act for so long to hide who I truly was out of fear of rejection.

These types of events get you to most importantly FACE those fears inside of yourself and make them conscious so that you can love them and embrace them. Truly facing your fears means to LOVE every aspect of yourself and embrace those aspects non judgmentally.

I feel I have anxiety still in my life relating to certain issues largely with sleep, but I feel I'm finally on a true spiritual path as nothing else matters to me now other than Being who I truly AM authentically.

Longing for Fire

All I Am held down inside

All I Am was hidden

The echoing fear of what I'd find

if all would be forgiven

Thoughts arising of what they'd think

If this child's shell would break

An explosive Love so on the brink

A Love to soothe all aches

My skin so crawling with desire

My outsides wearing thin

The appearance just a mere attire

of a Light that burns within

So pale and cold, I wandered through

So destitute of Love

When oh when would I break on through

to the truth I am Above?

I wandered through this plastic wasteland

a comfort zone of pride

A plethora of changing masks

to hide all that I was inside 

This burning Love I long to show

to all I within my stride

Oh how oh how could they ever know?

if I'm hidden by my pride

I search and search to only fail

I'm bounded by my mind

This fire burns to no avail

oh Heaven where do I find?

Suddenly, the light appears

all appears so Bright

this Love I Am shines oh so clear

all held within this Light

The walls of fear come falling down

The walls that held me back

All the chains that kept me bound

That all expressed such Lack

This Burning flows so mightily

I Am here for all to see

All that's left is authenticity 

I finally found the key

All of me, I share with you

This fire expressed within

to be all I AM all the way through

Love is where it all Begins.

A poem I wrote about my awakening process which is still on-going. 

With Love

My Meditation

I've had some stress on and off over the past few months over noise in my apartment. My downstairs neighbor's TV is heard at random times in my living room. I live on the top floor of a six story apartment building. The walls are shit here, which means I can hear my down stairs neighbor when he coughs and he can hear me when I fart. While it does not keep me up at night (his TV that is), I find it irritating that I have to listen to his TV in my living room. When I'm sitting in my living room trying to meditate, or relax, it's very distracting to have to listen to the rumblings and mumbling of his TV. Part of the problem I find is the acoustics of the apartment are terrible. So, I don't know what can actually be done other than putting my AC for now and blocking it out.

So, I decided to go outside. It's a beautiful evening. Gorgeous sunset outside and there is quite a lovely breeze and some humidity. Very summery feel to the evening. I sense tension in my abdomen at the thought of having to go back upstairs to my apartment and listen to my neighbor's TV.

I sit on the park bench and face traffic intentionally to put myself in a more vulnerable position. I close my eyes. Everything hits me. Fear. My eyes are shaking as I sit and feel cars go by watching me and possibly questioning why there is a guy sitting on a bench with his eyes closed. I feel people around me possibly making fun. My eyes still stay shut and feel this in my body and simply allow those thoughts to be. The thoughts come a plenty, the feelings of worry, self conscious, and fear arise, the mind wanting to open the eyes to 'appear normal' comes through as a thought and a feeling of tension. My eyes remain shut and I continue to watch and feel and simply allow all that is to arise. This only takes 5-10 minutes. What an incredible experience, when I don't give in to those feelings! I felt much more freer and comfortable after this meditation and will do this again tomorrow.

The hard part of meditation for me is not giving in to the mind's demands to want to 'stop'. There are a gazillion reasons to listen to a thought....any thought...those reasons....are made out of thought....but only one reason to continue to meditate and that reason has no thought behind it.

What is Vulnerability?

I've been thinking recently. What exactly is vulnerability? My perspective since I started this blog is starting shift a lot from my earlier posts.

I notice within myself that at times, I want to make people like me and in turn, I will at times resort to a tactic of fear, in that I will not open up honestly to that person and instead think about what that person wants to hear. Much more so in the past than the present, but it still happens at times. There could be a plethora of reasons that I want someone to like me. Perhaps, I am trying to attain something from that person, whether it be security, a temporary feeling of 'being wanted' or a distraction to something else going on in my life that I don't want to face and in turn, desperate to gain the love from another. One of the reasons energetically that I became physically sick in the first place.

Yet, vulnerability allows me to be scared. It allows my fears to fully surface and be there for everyone to see. No insurance, no security, just me, flaws and all for the world to see. But, it's honesty that's so important in our re-lating to one another. Fear is ok too of course. But, fear truly does restrict and contract consciousness if projected outward. I find with myself, when I am authentic to another person, it means that I am willing to risk having that person run away from me after learning more about me, my past and all, just to Be as I am to that person. Where are my intentions? With love, they are to fully express me, as I already am. With fear, they are to make that person like me. What's the choice going to be? Honesty is the highest form of love. My chakras open the more expressive I am through honesty.

I've been a control freak for too much of my life. I went to an 'out of body experience' seminar tonight in Manhattan and the man leading it told me that the problem holding me back from self induced astral projection is that I am trying too much to control. (Shocker). It's funny because I found that astral projection has been a form of learning for me to understand my fears more so. It's taught me already the true meaning of 'letting go'. You can't go out of your body unless you let go. You can't sleep at night, unless you let go. You can't align with your nature, unless you let go. How do you let go? Surrender.

With Love

An Enlightening NDE

One of the most profound, enlightening things I have ever read. A good friend shared this with me today. I would imagine that this is what true Enlightenment is. This gave me incredible chills.

Read and enjoy:

Profound NDE