Fear and Loneliness, In a Crowded Space

We’ve experienced this, congregating with good intent, for right purpose.

We feel good, we feel sufficiently congregrated.

Yet, there’s this guttural undertone. We feel alien. We feel alone. We feel scared. We’re in a crowded space.

Reaching out is nearly automatic. Reaching out invokes response.

Initially, we reach out to those physically nearest us. We feel a connection to this moment we describe and experience. Yet, the response hits the rocks that comprise our self.

Questions, concerns, fears take over.

What are these people after? Is this some personal joke, where we’re the punch line?

Are they just working out some past personal travesty on us? Simply, checking some box to feel better about who and what they are? Which and why they have done what they have done?

Not dissuaded by the falling so short of initial response, we begin expanding our reaching out beyond the immediate physical space that feels so crowded. This seems much like writhing in a desert and imagining water. Can any good come from it?

What possible relief is so not here that we must conjure it up with our mind? And, this conjured vision of relief is elsewhere, not here. Are our hopes that distant from the reality we appear to occupy?

Maybe, our hopes and our reality are neither.

It appears obvious; our immediate attempts at immediate relief will not be answered. Our secondary attempts at relief will not be answered. Not because the answers are not there, but because of where we seek those answers, from others.

As long as we look for salvation and relief from outside of us, we will absolutely fail at both. The way we feel is internal junk and not fired up by some external source. Any change of how we feel must originate internally, not from some external salvation. Any change of how we think begins with our mind and ends with what we do with it.

We fear what we feel we cannot affect in this life. We feel alone when we feel we cannot affect others in any productive way, one-on-one or in some crowded space.

Both the fear and the loneliness are apparitions. Both are an illusion we create to not act and to feel frozen in inaction.

Our intention, good, has been allowed to become clouded by the ideas of tomorrow and the failures of yesterday.

Both the hopes and the fears live in this day. Neither are standalone.

Both hope and fear drag life into the emotional gutter, the mind locking the door on the way down.

Neither hope nor fear can provide any relief for any one.

Hopes and fears are synonymous. Let go of both now. Live now.

Death Happens, Understanding Happens

Death happens. It’s what makes life possible.

Our lives are much different than we can ever understand with thought or feeling alone. Still, just a consideration of death and life can yield concepts approaching understanding of everything, approaching enlightenment.

Our mind is what sets us apart from the rest of the universe. This apartness is at the heart of much of our pain and all of our suffering because it is not true. In reality, everything that is the universe is still here, no less, no more. It’s the same everything, it just seems completely different.

In every bit of us are the beginnings of the universe. In every bit of us are bits of mom, bits of dad, bits of humanity.

The same is true of everyone you meet and in everything you can see or feel. We are inextricably connected to everything and everyone.

When we are born, the universe did not change or shift at all. The same is true when we die, the universe does not alter or change course whatsoever. The universe just is. And, we are part of that is, alive or dead.

Every bit of the past no longer exists. The past is all the present is. The present contains all that will be all futures. Those futures will all ultimately be called a present.

Search for deeper understanding. It is there.
Challenge the assumptions at the heart of your every day.
Everything that ever was is in this day. Everything that will ever be is in this day.

We can unleash the potential of right now.
We have a mind. We have a heart. We have a body. What do you want to do with it?

Relax and Relieve, Shed and Open

As I relax, my body relaxes.

Tears Shed.
Our Grip Begins to Loosen.
The Universe Begins to Open.

My body is a physical form in a constant state of change. It is not a form, though; it is an attempt to hold matter and energy together, connected autonomously.

Tears Shed.
Our Grip Loosens Further.
The Universe Opens.

When I consider allowing someone to use their hands and their intention on my body in a loving, healing way, we just cannot comprehend how anyone ever would.

Tears Shed.
Our Grip Loosens Further.
The Universe Opens.

How could anyone love this, want good for this? How could anyone wish any relief for me?

Tears Shed.
Our Grip Loosens Further.
The Universe Opens.

How could I ever accept what I cannot understand?

Tears Shed.
Our Grip Loosens Further.
The Universe Opens.

Keep Trying.
Attempt Understanding Always.
Loosen Your Grip.
Shed Your Tears.
Open Yourself Up.
Rediscover Your Universe.

Uncover Our Role in Our States of Living

Every one of us is looking for a few basic things. We want to feel good and we don’t want to feel bad. This is the difference between peace & happiness and pain & suffering. We should remain open to understanding how these states of living (peace, happiness, pain and suffering) develop in our life.

What brings about these states of living? Where do they come from? How can we affect these states? Why do they exist? When will it end?

Connecting cause and effect is critical to transforming our life. The only way to transform our life is to develop a deep understanding of our direct role in the development and experience of each of these states of living. There’s much we do every day to maximize the good and minimize the bad, we just fumble the ball, pay little to no attention and don't challenge our view of it whatsoever.

Elaborate orchestrations do not create peace and happiness.
Events and traumas do not create pain and suffering.

The mind is what highlights the states of living. The mind focuses on one set over the other set, and can move from one to another quickly. Realizing the powerful role our minds have in every bit of this process begins to place the wheel back in our hands.

When we suffer, instead of just being miserable with it, be curious about how the suffering develops and sustains itself. What are the factors that govern the development and the disipation of the suffering? How can we interrupt the development and quicken the rate of disipation?

When we're happy, really challenge the origin of that happiness. Is it somehow injected into us from some external source, or is it always underlying every moment of our existence and we just don't acknowledge it or actively ignore it? How many times have we felt happy and instead of embracing this state of mind, we push it away and attempt to silence it?

It can be scary to feel sustained happiness. It wakens up our mind and our awareness, and there's plenty we've ignored and for far too long. The flood of awareness can be overwhelming, so instead of focusing that awareness we shut it down completely.

Let us nurture all of our states of living. Let us get to know each.
Let us uncover our natural state and embrace it openly.
Let us have patience as we explore this wonder we call life.
Let us just be.

In Contention

Contending with difficult moments that remain transfixed in the present.