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sussexmemphis · 4 years

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One often finds themselves mirrored with a deceived mouthful of character lessons that taste nothing shy of room tempered salty clay and confusion, a mouthful of sand and sugar. There are star systems of small-pulsating sadnesses living within these character lesson occurrences. Ironically, they outline the silver linings. These small pleasures, motivations fueled by existences we care for more than ourselves. If you cannot relate, enjoy what you have, or do not while you can, as one cannot say when, you will. The more we live, the more I relate to/understand Sisyphus but not in a depressive state of mind, no, not that, we have invested too much to allow that to happen as we have very little to lose, but the value of that which remains our own is that of immeasurable wealth. Understand Sisyphus in the way that this world is much like his hill in the depths of Hades, and our boulder is everything we attach to and that of which attaches to us. Though the world is round, there are more than the one hill in Hades to maneuver our boulders up and down and around. I do not know which world is more emotionally driven and taxing, that within Hades, or that which is current.  Stranger, distant warmth I will never know, invisible friend, enemy, seek the value of ‎Absurdism and find yourself free, swimming in the river of forget aware of the absurdity of existence soon to nothing. Build a world for yourself with the world around you as what you find is for you. Nature waits for no one and what sits before you on the outskirts of the beaten paths has been patiently sitting long before you had the vision, waiting for your arrival. If nature moves you for good, do the same.  I hope this earth oven project I am working on works out. I would follow with a promise to post a follow up but one of the reasons I love it here [Tumblr] is partly due to how invisible I am to the thinning world that exists on this platform; I hold a strong feeling that not everyone, but most anyone who reads this will not care and that is completely fine as why should it not be? I have been alone a lot lately. I do speak to people from time to time, but most of the time, and like many people at the moment due to current events, am alone. I am not lonely, no. I do not get lonely when i am alone. I am not sad, no. This post is not about that nor a bellow within a dark cryptic sea, it is about a choice within an awakening. Choosing to invest all of ones systems in those that have a lesser awareness factor of self (I am not going to get into this, think really deep and then give each one of your insides a kiss and a name) secretly accept the sacrifice of inner most self and never feel more relieved and open to lesson. There is a mutation of fearlessness within this.  Things I have learned and incorporated to my systems within mental and physical solitude and growing alone. + A unity in the way we have learned to work together within this new awareness.  + A more pure form of patience. + The sound of silence. + Controlled loss of control. + How to convince everything within me.  = Kindness and all that it entails.  Granted, most of these things we all know, and the list is to grow for all of us, but to mentally and with conviction make a rippling effort to grant all systems their independent school of thought, meditation, and function awareness, will eventually yield a fruit one has never produced.  This earthed oven i am building is in a way dedicated to the french absurdist philosopher Albert Camus, and will be named after Sisyphus, the symbol [in the eyes of Camus] of the absurdity of existence. All of these boulders and stones I pushed, carried alone up deep hills when the sun was at closest glow. To bring them home when the moon was entering my darkness, whispering greetings, to repeat the process in reverse in the following days light and take them down a steeper hill with a side smirk pulled high and tight on upper corner of my thick mouth and chortle within my strong, muzzled, exhausted exhale; representations of all my lives prayers both answered and unanswered written within grains of sand and salt compressed to that of rough sedimentary rock(s), earth sign anchors.  As in control I am aware/desire to be, am equally aware to not be. The universe does not owe us anything as we owe it everything. I am my own Zeus as I am my own Sisyphus as are, you.

#Temples of inner most outer self

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lavieendonna · 6 years

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Brushwork || ArtMajor!Calum AU (Chapter 26)

Summary: An Art Major AU where Dallas - third year gawky art student at VCA - makes a deal with Calum - her cute new neighbour and project partner - and they spend the semester learning that the perfect masterpiece takes a whole lot of brushwork.

Date: 27 October 2018 Requested: lol Pairing: Calum + Dallas Words: 3.1K Warnings: anxiety-ridden family confrontations FTW! A/N: so this is like, what, 4 months late? Or something? But it’s nearly over so please bare with me! Thanks to the one or two people who still read this piece of shit. If there’s no one, well, I feel good for posting this just for myself anyway.

Big Love xo

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Chapter 26: Usually When She Looked at Me I Felt Like I Wanted to Throw Up My Insides and Shrivel Up on The Pavement

I honked the horn of Ashton’s car outside of Belle’s flat, immediately regretting it when I realised that it was heading into the late evening and I would have disturbed family dinners all through the neighbourhood. And I knew I did, too, because Belle lived in that kind of area; the kind on the “classy” side of the bridge hat was one hundred percent better (and cleaner) that the student residence where I lived.

Nevertheless, Belle come out of the house swiftly with a duffle bag slung over her shoulder, pausing only to turn around and lock the front door. She was in leggings and her infamous oversized grey hoodie, UGG boots covering her feet, much like me. I breathed a tiny sigh of relief when I realised I hadn’t under-dressed.

“My housemate is a bitch.” She said to as soon as she slumped down into the car, without so much as a proper greeting, throwing her bag into the backseat behind her and borderline knocking me out in the process.

“What’s she done now?” I asked with a grimace, knowing that Belle never really called Nancy names without a reason.

“She ate my Ben and Jerry’s,” Belle huffed as I got ready to back out of the driveway. “and when I asked her about it, she completely denied it! Like, there’s only two of us in the house; who the fuck else was it going to be?”

I sniggered to myself as I tried to imagine how that conversation would have done down.

“Maybe you have an ice-cream-eating ghost haunting your house.” I teased and belle rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, his name’s Little Jimmy and his favourite is strawberry cheesecake.”

I cackled with laughter while Belle seemed to lighten up a little and chuckled.

“Actually, Nancy’s pretty superstitious. If I tell her that she might freak and move out.”

“That’s just evil.” I laughed. “But if it works, it wouldn’t be a total loss, would it?”

“Hell no!” Belle cheered. “How was the Showcase?” She changed the subject, still giggling. I grimaced at the memory, not really wanting to talk about it but knowing that I was way past hiding it from my sister.

“That bad, huh?” She asked gently, noticing my lack of response. I nodded, trying not to sigh but not really succeeding.

“It… sucked.” I summarised.

“Did you pass the mural, at least?” Belle’s voice sounded hesitantly hopeful, I guessed to try and find the light in the total fiasco that was yesterday’s Showcase. I shrugged, the familiar feeling of defeat settling back into my stomach.

“I think so.” I hummed, following it up with a scoff. “But it doesn’t matter, anyway. Calum painted Polly.”

Belle paused, brows furrowing in confusion at the sentence I’d just spouted at her.

“Wait, what?” She made a face. “What do you mean he painted Polly?”

“You know how our designed were based off of ballerinas?” I reminded her, glancing at her quickly to see her nod slowly.

“The ones who didn’t have faces?” She asked and I nodded this time, continuing to steal glances at her while I drove, silently begging her to put the pieces together on her own so I wouldn’t have to say the words out loud. My chest ached a little as I remembered how humiliated I’d felt when the curtain had dropped.

“Whoa.” Belle let out a disgruntled huff. “That’s… that’s fucked. Why would he do that?”

I huffed this time, more out of frustration than anything. Truth be told, I was still trying to decide if I was still angry about it. Part of me was furious and betrayed and was convinced that Calum had done it to spite me. I’d told him about the strife between Polly and I and by painting Polly on the piece we’d worked so hard over felt like a huge slap in the face.

But the other part of me, the part that still cared about Calum, understood where he was coming from. And he was right, Polly had inspired the whole idea to start with. And he was just trying to help me – even though I didn’t deserve his help after everything I’d done.

“He didn’t have much of a choice.” I settled for saying, though I couldn’t tell if the words were a lie or not. They didn’t feel like one. “After our fight the day after the date I ghosted. I didn’t want to face him so he had to finish the mural on his own. I think he was one of the only ones talking to Polly at the time, too, so…” I ended my shitty assumption with another shrug, and Isabelle just nodded slowly. I guessed what I said was fair if even she agreed with it.

We were quiet for almost the rest of the drive, except for the low hum of the radio, as I navigated my way through the inner-city suburbs and headed east towards our mother’s place. I could feel the air grow more and more tense as we both pondered what was to come when we arrived.

“Are you ready? To face her?” Belle was the first to break the silence. I grimace and gave a small, one-shouldered shrug.

“I guess.” I mumbled, but then I scoffed and retracted the statement. “Well, no, I’m not. But we’re kind of past being ready for it aren’t we?”

Belle just murmured her agreement, and when I stole a quick glance at her from the corner of my eye, she looked scared. Terrified, even. The car rolled to a stop at a red light and I took the chance to take her hand and squeeze it quickly.

“You’re going to be fine, you know that right?” I told her with a small encouraging smile. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Belle snorted rather unattractively.

“Uh, she’ll probably bludgeon me to death with an antique vase and force you to help bury my body and keep it a secret until she eventually dies of a heart attack which would mean you’d have to come clean years and years later and you’ll get arrested for being an accessory to murder and get taken away from your family to spend the rest of your life in prison and you’ll never get to see your kids so you’ll die in your cell from a broken heart – and that’s just for dropping law school!”

Belle was wailing, but we were both laughing anyway.

“We’re going to be fine!” I told her again as Mum’s street came into view. “She’s our mum. Shehas to love us – no matter what.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Belle huffed, but she’d gotten some colour back in her cheeks so I knew she believed me – even if it was just a little bit.

I wished I could pinpoint the exact moment Belle and I had switched roles in our relationship. It was a weird feeling, being the “level-headed” one for once. I felt kind of useful as opposed to useless for the first time in what felt like an eternity – and while it did feel a quite nice, I was difficult to get used to.

It was dark by the time I shut off the car in Mum’s driveway. Belle and I made no move to get out, either, both of us too scared to even breath. I swallowed, a lump already forming in my throat.

“We’re, uh. We’re gonna be fine.” I said, though based on the pitch of my voice and how many octaves it jumped I was more so trying to tell myself than my sister. Belle looked at me carefully, fear in her eyes but her face as composed as she could.

“We’re going to get skinned alive, aren’t we?” She asked monotonously and, frankly, it was almost as terrifying as what we were about to walk ourselves into.

“Uh-huh.” Was all I could muster.

I’d never heard my heart beating so loud as it was in my ears in that short walk from the car to the front door of the house. It was pounding in my chest so hard I thought it was about to rip through my ribs and leave a gaping hole for the rest of my organs to fall right out behind it. Belle’s arm brushed up against mine and even though it was just for a second, I could still feel her trembling from the inside out.

“Mum?” I called into the house as my sister and I opened the door and stepped carefully inside. Almost all of the lights were on inside, and despite the lukewarm weather outside, the heater was running, too, with music was trickling through the spaces from somewhere within. This was normal, which was always a good sign with my mother. But the red flag that made my stomach churn even more was that she didn’t respond the second we walked into the house like she usually did.

“Hello?” Belle tried this time. No answer. We shared an incredulous look before we dumped our bags in the front room and started to wander further into the house. The dining room was empty as well as the living room, and she wasn’t in her bedroom – though neither of us expected her to be.

Just when I was about to suggest we check the sun room (where Mum often went to read and pretend she wasn’t journaling while she journaled), Belle stopped in the doorway of the kitchen and shifted on her feet uncomfortably.

“Hey, mum…” She said sheepishly into the room and I sidled up behind her with a tiny, apologetic wave.

“Hi.” I did much the same and, much like vampires – albeit very awkward vampires – we waited in the doorway until Mum decided to invite us further inside.

She was cooking, which was odd. Not that she never cooked for herself, she just seemed to be very into it tonight. Her long dark hair was swept back into a high ponytail that was somehow both messy and elegant at the same time, and she was actually wearing her black metal framed glasses for once. She was wearing a snug black t-shirt and a pair of red flannel pyjama pants, under a red apron that was splattered with flour and various liquids, but her face was still flawless with a killer red lip and hoop earrings. She was scowling, naturally, paused in the middle of the kitchen with a wooden spoon in one hand and the other resting on her hip.

“I didn’t realise you two remembered where I lived.” She deadpanned and usually this was the moment where her eyes would flash wickedly and her nostrils would flare, but tonight she just looked sad and my heart broke a little bit.

“Mum, don’t.” Belle pleaded in a voice no louder than a whisper. She had all but surrendered already and Mum had only spoken one sentence to us – collectively.

“Don’t, what?” Mum challenged, but her voice wasn’t much better. “Be hurt?”

“Please, Mum.” I stepped forward a little, trying as hard as I could to will the tremble in my bottom lip to go away. “Let us make this right.”

“Why?” Mum still fought. “How do I know you two won’t blow me off again?”

“We won’t.” Belle said, a slow and quiet tear trekking down her cheek already. “Mum… Mum, I need you.”

For a moment I really thought Mum was about to kick us out. She was deadly silent for what felt like an eternity, just staring at us – or maybe she was staring through us. Whichever it was, it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Mum scrutinising me with words and disappointment was one thing and I’d endured through that more times than I liked to admit. But her scrutinising me with silence and unreadable eyes was probably going to give me PTSD.

Mum gave a small gesture with her wooden spoon to the barstools on the other side of the island counter, and as if we were seven years old again we obeyed. We sat carefully, Mum taking a minute to turn down whatever was cooking and wipe the bit of flour off of her face before she turned back to us with crossed arms, leaning against the opposite counter.

“Is this the part where you tell me you dropped out of law school?” She asked very matter-of-factly. Belle and I stared at her wide-eyed and stunned. How did she even find out about that? She used to tell us all the time that mothers knew everything, but I thought it was just some ridiculous old wives’ tale mums told their kids to scare them into behaving.

“You knew?” I asked her in a squeaky voice, and her dark eyebrows rose at me.

“You knew?” She threw back. “You knew about your sister and didn’t tell me?”

“I –” I didn’t even know how to respond so I sat there gaping like a fish, desperately looking to Belle with hope that maybe she’d thought this through and knew what to say.

“Don’t be mad!” Isabelle begged, sniffing carefully and it was clear it was taking everything she had to keep herself together. Mum blinked at her a little patronisingly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t want me to be mad about you quitting school and not telling me about it?” She hissed and Belle shook her head, taking a deep breath. “Or is it that you don’t want me to be mad that you chose to conspire with your sister against me?”

Belle’s head fell and her shoulders shook and I was wondering if this was how she pictured this going or if it wasn’t going the way she planned at all.

“We weren’t conspiring, Mum.” I said, not loudly and not aggressively, but firmly enough that Mum’s new furious glare was directed at me instead of my mess of a sister. “We were just scared.”

For the first time since the day after our dad’s funeral, Belle and I watched as Mum’s bottom lip quivered like she might cry. She looked away from us, her brain clearly running a million miles an hour. But when she looked back, she just looked hurt and it made me feel like I’d just kicked a puppy.

“I don’t know where you two got the idea that I’m so terrifying,” She said so quietly that I almost missed it. “But it’s doing my head in, I hope you know that.”

She wiped a single tear, and even though it didn’t smudge her makeup even in the slightest, I knew for sure that Belle and I had fucked up. Mum had always made a point of not crying in front of us, especially when we were kids – even beforeour Dad had died. The fact that she was now, even just that one tear, that meant we’d reached the point of no return. She would always hold this with her – even if we did somehow manage to fix this.

“We’re not scared ofyou, Ma!” Belle sobbed in a trembling voice while she dabbed at her eyes with a stray tissue she appeared to have found in her pocket. My eyes prickled with the oncoming tears, my chest tightening as I listened to Belle’s near-hyperventilating. “We were scared of disappointingyou. You invest everything you have into us, you worked your way here for us! Do you know how hard it is for us to try and prove that we’re worth that much?! How hard it is to make sure we don’t fuck this up for you? All we ever want is to make you proud and with Dad gone it’s like we have to work twice as hard.”

I didn’t think Belle intended to bring our father into this conversation, but the second it slipped out it was done and the three of us were all crying. Belle was the only one sobbing hysterically – Mum and I just let the waterworks happen quietly on our cheeks, but we cried. And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that this was probably one of the first times all three of us had cried all at once.

Slowly Mum made her way over to where we sat, abandoning her wooden spoon in the sink and reaching over the counter to wipe at Belle’s cheeks with her thumbs. She didn’t say much for a while and just offered Belle a clean tissue – which, to be honest, I missed where exactly she pulled it from – and she did her best to clean her face. When Mum’s eyes turned to me I just looked down and did my best to wrangle with the stabbing guilt in my gut.

“You girls…” Mum sniffled, and Belle and I stole a quick glance at her. “You’re all I have left. I took what your father left us and tried to build something great... but you’re it. You’re all that matters. You’re all I need.And… and I never, ever wanted you to feel like you weren’t up to par.”

I wiped at my dripping nose on the back of my sleeve ungracefully as I felt myself fall into a shudder of sobs much like Belle had before. Mum sidled over to stand in front of me and reached over to wipe at my cheeks this time. She pulled my face up so she could look me right in the eyes and although my tears blurred my vision almost completely, I could tell that Mum’s eyes were urgent and purposeful.

“You are enough.” She told me carefully and I really thought I might burst at the words. “You’ve always been enough. Both of you.”

She came out from behind the counter and Belle and I practically jumped off of our chairs so that the three of us could envelope ourselves into the most awkward but warm group hug I’d ever experienced in my life.

Belle was still shaking between Mum and I but somehow, I knew that even though we hadn’t mentioned her biggest secret yet, this moment with Mum was enough for her for now. I could feel it, the same way I could feel it was enough for me, too.

Mum kissed us on our faces and temples a million times each before she pulled back to look at us both the way I imagined her looking at us when we were kids. Usually when she looked at me I felt like I wanted to throw up my insides and shrivel up on the pavement, but not this time. This time I just wanted her to squeeze me so hard that I might pop.

“Alright, enough tears.” She said decidedly, wiping her own eyes and walking powerfully back into the kitchen as if this heartfelt moment was just another moment to pass. “Set the table for dinner, will you?”

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goodvibesatpeace · 6 years

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Conscious Co-Creation

The illusion that we are mere “victims” of destiny or from what happens to us is fainting. We are not powerless victims at all, we are Creators. The only ones to blame for our “frustrations” and consequents manifestations. Because for all this “time” we have been doing it wrong, unconsciously, blindly, half powerless indeed!

How does Creation work?

It is not that what we think becomes reality. Wishful thinking is nothing but a self-hypnosis, trying to convince oneself of something we “want” to believe but in fact don’t, self-programing imposed by rational standards. When we “want” something so badly and give it all to the “law of attraction”; we visualize, we practice affirmations, we obsess about an expected outcome. Let’s just take a second to analyze all the details of what I just said and the way I particularly phrased it: … want…badly… obsess… expect… doesn’t sound positive at all does it?

But that is not all that it’s wrong with the process. All these are mental directives which serve an emotional cause, for example fear, or lack off something, or so we “think”. Instead of focusing on the root cause of the emotion, we quickly cover it up and compensate it with external distractions. Sounds familiar? – “Valentine’s around the corner and I still have no girlfriend! Oh well, thank god for wine and chocolates. I will just stuff myself on chocolate bom boms till I get diabetes!” Does it solve anything? No, just creates more problems, like a snow ball effect. This is how unconscious creation happens, and what we are doing now, and have been for a long time unfortunately.

Creation responds to what we feel! That is no surprise. We fear, so we create fear. We lack something, so we create more lack (need). We take the time to understand why we fear or need, and we finally break the cycle. We become a Conscious Co-Creator.

A sick, dying plant doesn’t blossom nor gives good fruits. First, we heal, we take the time to know ourselves. We analyze regarding what we have been projecting what is “wrong” (unbalanced) and needs our most loving attention.

Nowadays, stopping or “taking the time to” is not an option. The “system” says: “You stop, you die”, and we fearful obey. Have we forgotten we are part of the system, as in the system doesn’t work without us, not the rulers? It is we, the people, who truly give it life, our lives more specifically, and power. It is not the system that shapes us, like it is doing now because we are allowing it, it is us who shape the system. We who have the numbers, the majority, in practice we are the ones who actually rule (determine and make any outcome possible). We are the Creators!

So, we take the time to heal, if we choose to. We choose! We build a better system, healthier and wiser.

We enslave ourselves to pay the bills. Fact that all would say to ourselves to justify the madness and guarantee all the commodities and material toys we have come so accustomed to, but not necessarily, or not at all most of the times, of what we (truly) need and most definitely not the healthiest. What is more important, a cheap McDonalds burger and the latest smartphone, or an organic piece of fruit and a good book? What do we give to our children?

We work for a better health care and make ourselves sicker by the day, only to eventually give it all we sacrificed for to the pharmaceutical, doctors and nursing rooms. Was it worth it? Is that what we as creators would have pride of and love to create? Is that the example of life we want to pass to our children? Is that the world we want to make for them?

As a collective, a society, we must really stop and reevaluate our priorities. We are not just killing ourselves anymore, we are killing Earth, all animals, plants, all life forms and guaranteeing the same for the next generation, if there will be any. Not if we continue down this road. Ignorance and stubbornness are costing lives every second. It is not just in the other countries, or the neighbor, it is sliding silently on every doorstep. It is in what we eat, drink, and breath. This is the result of an unconscious creation. Lethal to say the least!

We have a choice. I choose Life. I choose my healing. I choose my conscious Creation!

A Conscious Creation transcends duality or polarity. It is not about being right or being in complete control of ourselves and everything. A conscious creation is about being the bigger picture, the balance of all “things”, feeling both sides and belonging to none at the same time. It is being Neutral, the third state of existence!

For whoever has a Heart, and is not afraid to use it, understands that there is “pleasure in pain” as there is “pain in pleasure”. Life is a paradox, we are paradoxes by nature. That is what makes us so special, and unpredictable. We can do great things and terrible things, we can create as we can destroy, we can love but also hurt. It is how it is. We accept it, we accept our nature, and try our best every day.

We also know there is a time to love but that there is a lesson in hurt. Wise is the one who understands when it is time to let go and destroy what it has created, only to create again a better version. So is cycle of life and evolution! We trust the flow of life. We accept each moment for healing, always going a little deeper. We don’t fight back, we use it for our advantage, whatever life throws at us. We keep our focus in our inner growth!

There is also benefit in “numbers”. I don’t create alone. As we live in a collective we are all co-creators, and when in synch we can do amazing things! We need each of you reading this. You need you!

Nothing truly ever dies, just transforms. We manifest to experiment, we make mistakes to learn better. But this is not about learning a better way, this is just perpetuating “someone” else’s mistakes and justify, over and over again, that there is no other way. We Know there is, deep in our Hearts, we know this is wrong, because it feels wrong. This is about waking up from a long deep sleep and restore the true balance of things.

This is my true love’s kiss to each of you. Let’s make the happily ever after together!

Much love to all!

#greatest versions #creation #co creation

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bluemoonpunch · 6 years

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Weekly Reading: 07/08 - 07/14

July 8th - July 14th

To The Collective

This week is going to bring in some swift moving energy and I think most of us are ready for it. The ascension process, of course, is still in full swish and we’re transitioning between frequencies and heightening our vibrations — a lot of change physically, mentally, emotionally, and within our environment will be noticed.

Mostly what we all need to focus on is harnessing and taking advantage of the Universal energy that will be brought in (check your Jupiter placement) this week to its full extent. Just as I’ve been saying for the past few weeks, we’ve had our time to really get things in place and to really make sure we’re doing things the right way, we’re doing what we want and doing what we know we are capable of completing. This week is a time to implement some of those plans and really, physically, bring that shit to life. It may still be a small step, but for any of you that have been waiting for shit to start moving again, this is it.

There’s a lot of guidance and reassurance here in this spread. A lot of you are still very nervous about the transition. A lot of you are still in a place of fear around the changes it could bring, what or who will be left behind once you move on. A lot of you are having a little shithead voice in the back of your head tell you that you can’t actually do what you’ve spent all this time trying to do, you might even have yourself convinced that it was a waste of time. Your guides, the Universe in general, wants us all to know that there is Divine Guidance at work worldwide right now. They have a much more hands-on approach compared to previous times because of this ascension process.

Trust them to have your back. Trust that you know what you are doing and that you are on the right track. Meditate and communicate with your guides when you need to, communicate with the people you love and trust, the people that love and trust you. Just move with it. Be more open to understanding the messages that are being laid out for you. Pay attention to your gut, pay attention to what feels right and what feels wrong.

It’s all good.

- notes on the individual sets and individual readings for fire, earth, air, and water signs under the cut -

Happy, Happy and Unfinished Symphony

Happiness is really nothing more and nothing less than a feeling of contentment on all levels of being within both your physical and metaphysical environment in a single moment. Happiness is not a “forever” sort of experience, it is not something you can truly strive for and achieve, it is an experience like every other emotion and sensation you feel.

I think a lot of us right now are in a place of discomfort, most of us aren’t anywhere close to being satisfied on all levels due to the ascension, due to the shifts and the transitions — it’s all just out of place. A new perspective is what this is asking for. The idea that the “unfinished symphony”, the process of creating the symphony is where the happiness lies. It’s in the process, not in the product.

The discomfort we feel, the dissatisfaction we harbor towards our current states can have a bit of shitty effect on how well we move through the transition. In terms of psychology, shit talking yourself down for failing can lead you to fail more simply because it’s what your focus on, therefore you are unable to see the opportunities that come that could allow you to succeed as you are only aware of the paths of failure. I’m definitely not preaching any California hippie mentality of shitting out all of your negative thoughts, feelings, and experiences and maintaining *~positivity~* because for most people that shit isn’t realistic.

Understand that negative and positive exist together no different than day and night, light and shadow. Understand that the process, the transition, the struggle, the sadness, the anger, the fear, the discomfort here within yourself at this time is proof of progress. If you were feeling none of these things, if you were oh so *~positive~*, you would be stagnant, you would just be in a state of maintaining a veil of sunshine, living in a world of constant day and constant light… like could you imagine that??

You are progressing within a process — find the light in that.

Mending and Regeneration

This set here I felt connected more with the “discomfort” that people are feeling. I know I’m one of those people that have been going through a lot of physical bullshit with this transition. Ear infections, migraines, a lot of this weird “feeling like I’m in a dream” sort of shit. Vibrations are raising within everyone and even if you’re on board and your aware that it’s happening, it can still fuck with you.

The image I saw with these two cards was 1) a butterfly coming out of a cocoon with its wings still like smooshed together and just sitting there on a twig for a bit, 2) a snake shedding its skin and immediately slithering under a rock, and, 3) a baby being born and then being put in a little baby parka. Basically, these were all image of acclimation.

The butterfly doesn’t just bust out of the cocoon and fly off right away, it needs to fucking get grip on the whole “I have wings now” thing, and the snake just went through exfoliation hell and needs to let its skin toughen up, and the baby has been inside a small little water heater and needs MONTHS to really get comfortable in the outside world. That’s all of us in this. We’re all going to need time to transition and to acclimate to the “new world” or the “new life”.

And please know that the process is happening at different speeds for everyone. Collectively, yes, we’re moving up at the same rate, but on an individual level, on a soul level, we’re all at different levels of “No thanks, I’ll stay here.” and “BEAM ME UP!!” — it’s going to take time. None of it is going to happen overnight, and again, it’s not always going to be a comfortable situation to handle.

Chopped Wood and Round and Round + Here and Now

The first thing I thought of with these three cards was that saying about insanity being defined by doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The “Here and Now” card came out with the Round and Round and it was like very clear “STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND THINK, IDIOT!”

Again, because of the transition, because of all the ~new life~, all the different paths that we have now chosen for ourselves there are a lot of us who are trying to force things into existence and trying to force certain aspects of our lives to stay the same. I can definitely relate to that — noticing things are slipping away, or noticing that certain plans just aren’t getting “funded” the right way and just trying to make it work even though there are dead stops constantly. Just doing it over and over and over again, trying to force my way into something or to really nail something down and basically, once one thing changes a lot of things have to change. Once you started on one plan, a lot of other ones needed to change in order to mold around that one specific path.

It’s a bit difficult to explain, but it’s in the realm of if you have to struggle to be comfortable in a certain place, it’s probably not the place for you. If you find yourself doing the same thing over and over again, trying to get something to work out and there’s a dead stop at the same point every time that sends you back to the start, it’s probably not for you. A lot of sacrifice needs to be made, which is why having your priorities in check is a must right now.

This portion here may require some inner work, meditation, communication with external energies in order to really pinpoint things and get everything situated if you don’t know how to proceed on your own. However, if you just sort of settle down a bit, just breathe, be in the “Here and Now”, those answers will come to you, you already know what you need to focus on.

Fire Signs: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius

For the fire signs this week, I feel like a lot of you are really going to feel that energy wave and you’re going to jump on it (Yang+Go The Distance), and that’s all well and good, it’s what you’ve been waiting for, but you don’t want to be too brash with it. In terms of where the ascension is taking us, pushing forward with the ego framed in the Divine Masculine isn’t quite what you want to lead with. It is there for you, it is what you utilize the most and the best compared to other signs, however, the first two cards are where you need to be before you go running off.

Basically, you are being asked to embrace this energy and process it before you use it. Don’t work on impulse. Center in that “Peace” card, breathe a bit and let things come to you. You fire signs can definitely be more inclined to go out and get something yourself rather than waiting around for it to come to you, but that’s what would benefit you right now.

Use the energy that comes to you, take the opportunities that are given to you, but stay steady with it this week. Think things through.

Earth Signs: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn

Manifestation!

When I had all four cards laid out all I could think about was the word “manifest”. The image of shooting stars was in my head like, “Make a wish, bitch.” I really think a lot of you earth signs are going to be able to harness this energy wave this week and really turn it into something spectacular. It might not be overnight, you might even just be planting the seeds, but there’s something here for you.

Visualization — really imagining in great detail what it is you want, what are you working for, what do you want to see, what do you want to have. Visualize that shit, and work your way backward from it, see the paths that are necessary for you to take in order to get there. See it as clearly as you can, and just go, flow with the “To The Sea” card to a place where you can actually receive that gift of the “Treasure Island”.

Really, this spread is so simple but still so powerful.

But yeah, one of the big things to work on with the New Moon this week is to fine-tune your way of thinking and define your priorities, these cards here really work together to help you with that.

Air Signs: Gemini, Libra, Aquarius

This week air signs need to really tap in way deep to their intuition. You guys really need to start finding the comfort in your ability to just KNOW and to understand what is around you and within in you. I think for a lot of you, even those of you who are fully in the ascension process, still might be approaching this in a very logic-based, very strategic kind of way, which is fine to a point, but your soul needs to be in it too, not just your brain.

I’m these cards as being like a to-do list. Find the Happy, Happy — the contentment — within your ability to know and to understand, and then follow through by going even deeper, connecting with the Divine Feminine, the intuition in order to become just as content, just as trusting with your heart. Does that make sense?

A more abstract worldview I think could really help a lot of you settle into this a bit more.

Water Signs: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

The water signs, especially Pisces, tend to usually be the first to experience energetic transitions like the one we are currently in and because of that it can be a bit stressful. You can imagine the water signs acting at as the lead in a flock of birds flying in a V formation. A lot of energy, a lot of pressure can build up in front and behind. They are the first to hit and break through the wind while also, in a sense, being pushed by the other behind them to keep up a steady pace, to speed up or slow down for the sake of the other birds.

It can be stressful and in times like these, that empath shit can be a bit overwhelming as the energetic connections between people become much stronger. So, it all kind of piles up and a lot of water signs can feel very rushed or they can feel very stagnant depending on what kind of energies (other people) they are normally around. Really, water signs are supposed to be some of the most chill energies in transitions like this because, you know, they flow with it, but with so many people, THE WHOLE PLANET, ascending at once, a lot of you are getting pulled down.

These cards are really just messages of reassurance, and it almost felt like they were giving us permission to relax, to just sit and let it flow. There’s no need, and really no benefit for anyone, to be the head bird in a V formation. Everyone is going to walk through the same door at their own time and it’s not on you to make it any easier for them.

You know, back to the Mending and Regeneration thing — the butterfly emerges on its own, the snake sheds alone, and the baby comes out alone. I think that’s the most important thing for a lot of us to remember.

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0blivion-laughs · 3 years

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RAY CAESAR

Many call Ray Caesar the Godfather of Digital Art, and his process is completely digital from its beginning through the printing stage. Though he is certainly seminal in his oeuvre, it is his fantastically disturbing content that has made him a cult favorite, from collectors like Madonna and Elton John to the population at large who not only know of his heartache, but embrace it. Caesar frequently talks of suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Combine this with his time working in Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto and you are faced with a sea of controversial imagery.

“When you grow up in a dark place filled with fear and pain and cruelty, there is a tendency to find hidden places of pleasure and beauty within that world of the night,” mentions the artist. “I have always thought that the greater potential for evil and darkness that there is an even greater potential for good and light. There is a natural inner drive within the human mind to find balance in any situation and find ways of coping in a sea of turbulence. We are all stronger than we give ourselves credit for and when our conscious mind cannot handle something overwhelming in the darkness of the real world, our subconscious becomes very creative and takes its own path into an inner light. For me art is an expression of living in that duality and a visual voice to express fear and rage and sadness… and hope and calm and ultimately, love.”

SALAD DAYS

I was born in London, England in 1958, the youngest of four and much to my parent’s surprise, I was born a dog. This unfortunate turn of events was soon accepted within my family and was never again mentioned in the presence of polite company.

I was a rambunctious youth as was natural to my breed but showed a fine interest in the arts as I drew pictures incessantly on anything including the walls and floors of every room of our tiny house. After some trouble with intolerant neighbors, my family was convinced to move to Canada and it was not long before the burgeoning town of Toronto became our new home. Unfortunately the drawing continued to become somewhat atypical and aberrant and it was impressed upon me that such images might not be suitable for public viewing. In the summer of 69, there was a valiant attempt to stop me from doodling infamous contemptible fascist dictators upside down on my stomach with a ballpoint pen. I was consoled however by the encouragement to continue penciling in faces of flamboyant cowboys such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger and Tonto on my toenails but was expressly forbidden to talk to them at night. It can be said that there are defining moments in a dogs life that can only be described as pivotal. Mine came when I received a gift of a flesh toned 12 inch plastic movable human doll attired in cheaply made military fatigues called “GI Joseph”. I however named him “Stanley Mulver” and immediately resigned his commission from the light infantry. My Mother helped in this by sewing small business suits and leisure wear out of leftover Christmas fabric embroidered with holly and snowmen, tinfoil shoes and one tasteful Safari suit made of tight fitting powder blue rayon that proudly shone cobalt in the summer sunlight. It wasn’t long before I had begun making enlarged wigs out of gray plasticine. These wigs soon became huge pompadours for Stanley and looked even more grand when I meticulously imbedded small hairs from my daily body and face shavings. This hirsute practice along with walking upright allowed me to fit in with other children even though my father considered it a waste of time. In short, Stanley had become a visage of the Man I could never be, of that elusive self one sometimes glimpses down the tunnel of infinite reflected mirrors. Although ridiculed by my peers, I proudly wore Stanley around my neck at all times as if to say “SEE! This is the man I will be, a good man, a kind man”. I have worked in many fields over the years, attended obedience classes and art colleges, jobs designing horrible buildings in architectural studios, medical art facilities, digital service bureaus, suspicious casino computer game companies, eventually working at computer modeling, digital animation and visual effects for television and film. Some award nominations have been attained and I have been driven in long black liquor filled limousines and walked on hind legs down red carpets in Pasadena while wearing strange smelling rented tuxedos. Things change and summer years come to an end. My change occurred one night when my Mother visited me, which was slightly unusual because she had passed away some months before, a victim to the cigarette habit she could never quite lick. Facing a wall and slowly turning I saw the right side of her face ablaze in light, her hand trying to cover the light as if she were apologetic for having it seep through. Words were said about following rabbits down holes and I was shown galleries of work which were to be my own. My Mother was not the first visitation I have had and it seems she will not be the last. I live in a brick house with my wonderful wife Jane and a coyote called Bonnie. I like eating avocados and I don’t really mind being a dog.

THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN For 17 years I worked in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto from 1980 until 1997. I worked in a department that documented such things as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology and animal research. They were years that I will never forget, years of witnessing great sadness but also great miracles. I often awake in the middle of the night and realize I have been wondering the hallways and corridors of that giant hospital. As I lay there in the dark, I struggle to remember the fading words of those that still haunt my memories of so many years ago. It is so clear to me that this is the birthplace of all my imagery. It is appropriate that I now live my dreams for those that didn’t get a chance to live theirs…. to do otherwise would be a sin.

Much of my work at the hospital was tedious and boring in that I produced tremendous amounts of statistical data before the advent of computers and dealt with a lot of sensitive photographic material and work for publication. Another part of my job was overwhelming in that at any given moment I could typically find myself hovering over a tiny premature infant covered with tons of equipment. I would have to sift through the equipment to make a technical diagram, a teaching tool to allow intensive care nurses to have some idea of all that tangle of machinery that kept that tiny infant alive. Other times I would have to draw a similar thing of some poor animal in the research dept that had the misfortune of being a lab animal. To this day I have developed a profound love for animals that is very important to me. On a few occasions I dealt with forensic material for the court or sensitive medical documentation that would for me be overwhelming. I worked on board games and flash cards for brain damaged children and some of the early computer animations of the cryogenic removal of a brain tumors. Teaching hospitals are like tiny cities and whenever you think you have seen it all, reality slaps you in the face and shows you something that makes you re-evaluate everything. I learned in my life that human hands can be cruel and unkind but more often they can perform heart surgery or write a check to build a new wing of a hospital or just simply brush away a child’s tear.” Miracles do exist but they are often the product of our own actions and the incredible work of of the unsung heroes that care for children.

MY PROCESS

I create models in a three dimensional modeling software called Maya and cover these models with painted and manipulated photographic textures that wrap around them like a map on a globe. Each model is then set up with a invisible skeleton that allows me to pose and position the figure in its three dimensional environment. Digital lights and cameras are added with shadows and reflections simulating that of a real world.First the models are sculpted similar to pushing and pulling the surface of a piece of clay. I am often reminded of being in preschool with my huge chunk of Plasticine. I once modeled a Plasticine shoe but my father forbade me to wear it in public. I then create an inner structure of joints similar to a skeleton that allows me to pose the figure with a spine, shoulders, elbows and even finger joints. Many heads are modeled with many a different expression and these can be blended to create a subtle look similar to the one my wife has when I have done something suspicious.I color the models first in a very simple way, then each surface in the model is wrapped with a texture that may be painted digitally such as a flower petal or from a digital photograph such as a wood surface. I collect textures the way some people collect little silver spoons and I have a story about each texture in my collection such as the one about my father’s hip operation scar or the picture I convinced my gastroenterologist to give me of the inside of my colon. My favorite textures to collect are skin textures, as I have a legitimate excuse to ask people to expose large areas of bare skin.As my work is printed I am often asked about my original, but it exists only in the computer in a dimensional world of depth, width and height. I am fascinated by the concept that this 3 dimensional space exists much as another reality and even though I turn the computer off, I am haunted by the fact that this space is still there existing in a mathematical probability, and the space that we live in now might not be all that different.

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eminentfocus · 4 years

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Stranger Than Fiction

“I’m such an idiot! I can’t believe I said that! They must absolutely hate me! How will I ever recover from this? I hate it here!” We all do it. I’m guilty too. No one is immune to automatic negative thoughts. We all toss around these negative thoughts to allow us to imagine potential threats and problems. It is literally in our survival DNA to come to the worst-case-scenario. This gives us an opportunity to correct our behaviors to avoid harm, it’s necessary. We learned about a piece of this neural network last time, when we talked about loneliness. Today, we will really examine the sneaky little cognitive distortions that lead to chronic stress and body trauma. To do this, we must look at the story we tell ourselves to recognize our automatic negative thoughts. Ready for the dive into the rabbit hole? Here we go!

90 percent of the thoughts we have are habitual, that is, we have the same thoughts, daily, for the majority of our lives. What is shocking is that most of those thoughts are negative. Research has concluded that these negative thought patterns change the physical brain and our overall health. Any study done on chronic stress will prove this point repeatedly. The problem with automatic negative thoughts, or ANTs, is that they become habitual at a neurological level. We are literally creating physical neuro pathways to change the structure of our brain and thinking patters each time we engage with these thoughts. After some time, our behaviors and beliefs of logic change. Our mind convinces us that something is true that has no accuracy. Yikes!

Dr. Aaron Beck discovered “ANT thought streams” way back in the 1960’s when he was working with depression patients. They had very similar thinking patterns and stories that they told themselves about how they “fit into” the world. They had streams of thoughts in their heads most of the day about how they were not fit for the world and that they aren’t deserving of anything positive. He was able to narrow down thousands of repeat thoughts and separate them into three clear categories: They displaced negative ANTs about themselves, the world and the future. He quickly realized that the basis of these negative thinking patterns created a level of stress equal to a natural disaster for both our physical brain health and our mental well-being. Today, I will tell you that noticing your own personal ANTs and employing some tools to challenge and control them is an amazing return of investment to yourself. Turning off this useless, debilitating, negative chatter is one of the most powerful things you can do for your well-being. You are worth it, I promise!

Today I will break down the nine most common ANTs so that we can recognize when we may be off the rails. I will also give you four main tools to add to your toolbox that just may change how you think about most of the world. I advised you that this would happen here, so let’s just rip off the band-aid and get on with it, shall we?

Black and white thinking. We have already touched on the beast I like to call the “should monster”. This guy is the president of the always and never club. He tells us that things will always be this bad and that it will never get better. He completely misses all the good opportunities. He’s a jerk and a set-up. Quiet him!

Focusing on the negative. We all get into funks sometimes where everything just feels blah. Sometimes someone cuts us off in traffic and the entire rest of the day is a steaming pile of shit. Everything goes wrong and everyone is annoying. Noticed that? It’s not the world hunty, that’s you! Do the roses have thorns or do the thorn vines have roses? It’s up to you!

Fortune telling. No matter what they say to you, you know you will suck. You will bomb and everything that you imagined going wrong truly will. No one can change your mind, even yourself. You finish the project and get great reviews, yet still, you believe it failed. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point. See why you cannot get a different result here? You have decided to turn off your logic for fortune telling, why? Stop that. No one is that damn powerful!

Mind reading. “Oh, boy! I know they hate me! I can see it in their face. They look bored and pissed! Ugh! I know they absolutely cannot stand me right now”. Did you ask? Did you ever stop for a second and say, “hey, what are you thinking about”? I bet if you did you would learn that most people are thinking about their own ANTs a lot more than they are thinking about you. I know that probably stung a little, but the fact is that most people think about us way less than we think they do. Most times when they think about us, it is not in a negative light, but because they need help from us. Proven fact. Believe it!

Thinking with your feelings. You will hear me say it until you are sick of it: feelings are not directives, only warning signs. We need them but do not always need to act on them. It is okay to label and call out our emotions to try to reflect on the why, but this is where it must stop for your sanity. If you spend too much time here you create physical neuro pathways, remember earlier? Why the danger label? When you lay these pathways, you go from feeling something to actually becoming the feeling. This is a form of self-harm. Yes, again. I know!

Being ruled by should. Ah! The “should monster” strikes again! See why I call him a guttersnipe? He sits up on his pedestal and tells us how we should be doing things, thinking thoughts, caring for ourselves and others from his own level of survival. He’s a real Richard! We proved in an earlier post that guilting ourselves into change does not change behavior, see the alcohol and tobacco industry for quick examples. Guess what? It’s just more self-harm that actually demotivates you. Hard truth.

Labeling. Anyone who knows me understands that I struggle to label people. I have a hard time giving police an accurate description of people because I just do not label people or things. I cannot easily identify race, ethnicity, social status, and sometimes even gender because I have not practiced judging others on these things. However, I label the shit out of myself! Bad or aloof are two of my favorite labels for myself. What have I learned about this? Labels simply are thoughts that become self-fulfilling prophecies for yourself and ruin your relationships with other people. Labels have no place except on canned goods. Rip them off and throw them all away!

Taking things personally. As I mentioned with the sting earlier, people do not think about us as much as we think they do. When you see that someone is focused and engaged in their own mental turmoil it is so easy for us to assume that they are upset with us. We see their face, notice their body language. Hear their sighs of disapproval. Automatic thought: I must have said or done something to upset them. It has to be me because I looked at them. I noticed their turmoil so it’s me! Again, did you ask? Again, I bet it’s not even about you! They may be nervous about an upcoming presentation or meeting. They may feel ill prepared for a test. They may have gotten some bad news and not know how to process it… Most times, it’s not you! You’re not quite that important.

Blame. My alarm didn’t go off this morning, so it ruined my entire day. You didn’t call ahead to give me enough time, it’s your fault we’re late! Why didn’t you tell me right away? It’s your fault it got so bad! Sound familiar? It is easy to scapegoat people because we have a genetic need to be right. We need to be sure to feel safe. Truth is, you are the only person responsible for the condition of the pavement on your road. Only you. Own that shit! Sorry- not sorry.

I know that some of that hurt and it should if you do any or all of these things. Usually reflection and ownership feel a little bad at first. It’s okay. In fact, the only place we can start is where we are. How will we ever start if we cannot face the idea that we are only what begins us? Dr. Robert Emmons certainly can give us insight and hope through the practice of gratitude. He discovered that gratitude is the most powerful promoter of mental and emotional resiliency, while minimizing underlying negative emotions. It is easier said than done, though. Ready for the tools of the trade I promised?

Personify your own inner critic. You already been knowin’ he’s a shit. Give him a name and personality. This makes him real and gives you an added edge to get to know his ticks from outside of yourself. Take the time to really dig into who he is and how he is different from you at your core. He is a part of you but separate, make it that way mentally!

Get bored with his stories. We all have that one friend that tells the same three stories over, and over, and over, again. We know how to deal with that friend right? We deal with those same old repeating thoughts just like that friend. “Oh geezus! The same old story again dude? Really?!?” Eyeroll…

Reframing your “shoulds”. I should go run. Scratch that! I want to go run because I feel so much better after I do. I should go to work early. Wait! I want to get in early to gain traction on my day- I’ll get so much done! I should cook something healthy instead of getting take-out. No, sir! I am worth the time to make myself something that will encourage me to get me closer to my goals. Do THIS all the time. Never stop!

Countering ANTs with PETs. Positive empowering thoughts are the counterbalance to automatic negative thoughts. Remember everything that is negative has a positive, that’s the hope we find for change. This takes a piece of paper and a bit more work. This is one of the best tools you can use though, so worth the investment! Here how you do it:

Separate your page into three columns. The first one you will name “Trigger”, next “ANTs”, finally “New Thoughts”. In the first column you would place what triggered the ANT. Did you make a mistake, say something you didn’t mean? In the second column you will write your actual thought like “I suck because I messed up. I don’t deserve this job!” Finally you will take the time to write a new thought like “I am new at this. This is the first time I have done this and now I know what to do/not do next time. I’m growing”. The more you do this exercise the more you will understand your own ANTs and how to practice combatting them. You should quickly notice your common triggers and automatic responses. Super powerful! As with ANTs, PETs also create physical neuro pathways. Just like ANT’s, PETs can also become self-fulfilling prophecies. Go on now- do the fucking work, I’ll see you next time!

#TheRabbitHole

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thejustvisionary · 7 years

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DREAMS & GOALS: YOU ARE YOUR BIGGEST SUPPORTER

Keeping motivated and staying on top of your progress can be really difficult. Not only do we lack confidence in ourselves internally at times to really give it our all, the world around us can drain us of any desire to carry on. It’s hard at times to encourage yourself, keep your mindset strong and to fully believe in your potential. However, each and every one of us has an inner drive and determination which we can utilise in order to get where we want to be whether this is be in terms of our education, career or general self development etc. No one wakes up every morning feeling motivated and we all have our down days which may carry through to long periods of time. But there are a few things we can do to limit the extension of demotivation in our lives. Here are some tips to help you out when you feel like giving up.

REMEMBER WHY YOU STARTED

It is vital you always remind yourself of why you wanted to achieve your goal in the first place. Are you trying to achieve something in order to give something back to your family? Did you want that dream job because it was a means to launch the career you have worked ever so hard for? Did you study a specific subject to use it after to make a positive impact in the world? Was the business you began a means of creating something for yourself? Are you working on the path of self development in order to better your character as a human being? Whatever the reason is we all begin with a reason to achieve a specific thing. Personally, it has always helped me think back on why I started out when I have my days of demotivation. Taking my mind back to basics and thinking of my original motivations of pursuing my ambitions has always enabled me to recharge my emotions in order to feel more positive about the purpose of my journey.

DON’T RELY ON OTHERS FOR VALIDATION

Sometimes it is easy to fall into a negative way of thinking asking yourself “what is the point of doing all this hard work”. This is because at times we all feel unappreciated by our surroundings and the people we deem close to in our lives. But what you need to remember is that you cannot expect and should not seek validation or approval from others. Yes it is nice to feel appreciated by people we love and expect to have our corner, however you need to understand that validation from other human beings is not constant, therefore your ability to keep going forward will be affected negatively if you rely on others a huge amount for your motivation.

You may get people who will always have something negative to say and attempt to discourage your progress. Pay these people no attention and I truly do mean this, pay them no attention whatsoever because not every event in your life deserves a retaliation - as Michelle Obama said ‘when they go low, we go high”. Be grateful for the support you do get from individuals but don’t enable any lack of support to stop you from achieving what you really want to do. It’s great to have a people behind you advocating your cause further and we should all feel lucky if we have such people in our lives, but ultimately you are your biggest supporter.

SEPERATE DREAMS AND GOALS

Dreaming big is great and I would encourage everyone to dream big but of course the next step is to actually making these dreams come true. For me dreams have been visions of how I expect my life to look like, while goals to me are steps I have taken in order to make my dreams come true. These normally include small tasks I need to do daily; fulfilling smaller goals on a regular basis will give you a prolonged sense of accomplishment and the drive to enhance your development. Becoming a goal orientated person really helps driving the process forward because you discipline yourself to complete certain tasks by a specific deadline.

It is a worthwhile reminder that you do indeed have to work hard and maintain the goals that you set out for yourself, the results you seek will not come easy to you and in my opinion they shouldn’t either. Going through a challenging process of keeping up with your goals not only is an amazing character building opportunity but it will make you appreciate your achievements far greater than something which comes easy.

REJECTION IS GOOD - TRUST ME

I have lost count of the amount of times I have been rejected and honestly these setbacks were the best things which have happened to me. Not only did they ground within me a sense of resilience and determination, they also made me realise that without such rejections I would not be as grateful as I am now with what I have.

We all get rejected but the way we use rejections to make is what makes people successful. Sometimes it takes a lot of time to accept and adjust to being told “no” in our lives, after all we are human and being told that we cannot have something we want isn’t the best feeling in the world. But ‘no’ isn’t always a bad thing and most of the time it means you are being diverted to something better which is in alignment with where you truly need to be. It’s important that you convince your mind and heart that being rejected is not a personal attack against you as a person, there are most likely numerous other reasons why you were rejected from something. So do yourself the biggest favour and do not doubt yourself, rather use rejection as a means of staying strong, confident and motivated to keep doing better.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Now this might sound like a cliche to say but honestly it is such an important aspect. When we try and reach some sort of achievement we may become so invested in the final result that we often forget ourselves in the process of it all. For example, when I was doing my final year undergraduate law exams, I really stopped paying attention to and taking care of myself because I was just too preoccupied with getting good grades, by the end of my last exam I was so drained I became physically sick because of it all. Looking back at that I realised I did not have to do that to myself in order to reach by desired objective, since then I have paid more attention to me and it has been one of the best decisions I have made.

My advice would be not to forget about yourself in the process of achievement because you are the most important part of the overall journey. Don’t disregard your own well being and internal self love because it will only make you feel down and demotivated. Have that day out with your family or friends, buy that outfit you really like, make sure you eat well, pamper yourself whole heartedly with no guilt , or just have a day where you do nothing at all apart from read your favourite book in book with plenty of ice cream. You get the drift, sometimes take out time to do things which you enjoy because if you feel good on the inside about yourself this will definitely reflect on how you implement your actions on the outside.

ROUNDING IT UP

Life does not always go as planned and as human beings we can be prone to give up or feel like our efforts are going to waste. There are various things in life which we have zero control over, but there are also a lot of things that are within our control which we can use in order to fulfil our purpose and potential. A key aspect that is within our control is choosing not to give up and supporting ourselves. No matter how difficult things get or how many obstacles which may be presented in front of us ultimately giving up is our choice. So if you are reading this and feel like there’s no point of you continuing to achieve what you wanted - do not give up. Take a break if you need to, recharge your mind if you need to but use the choice that you've been given to not give up in a positive manner in order to get where you need to be. You’ll thank yourself for it WHEN not IF you reach your ambitions.

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imrootedbutifloate-blog · 6 years

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My Diagnosis in Words

Dear Andre Solo, you have succeeded in describing me in a way I would never have managed. Your article defines me from A to Z , thank you so much for having struggled to write down in the first place.

6 THINGS THE INTJS IN YOUR LIFE PROBABLY WON’T TELL YOU ABOUT THEMSELVES

if you have an INTJ personality type in your life, there’s a lot that they probably wish you knew. But there are also things we might not tell you—especially about our emotional side. As INTJs, we don’t like to show emotions (in fact, just writing this article was like pulling teeth). But that doesn’t mean our emotions never affect us. Here are six things that INTJs wish you knew—but we’ll probably never tell you. These things may not apply to every INTJ in equal measure, but I believe this list is generally true.

1. We have occasional outbursts, and they’re weird.

For a personality type known as “robots,” INTJs have a deep emotional core. We keep this largely hidden from the world, not as a protective measure but simply because we tend to view feelings as private. Expressing them in public is awkward, like forgetting to put on pants.

But those feelings are surprisingly sensitive. Your INTJ is likely to come equipped with:

A strong sense of dignity

Extremely specific tastes

Deep and often misplaced insecurities

The constant feeling that we aren’t achieving enough

A code of morals that we don’t talk about unless something violates it

An urge to take control in any situation where any of the above are threatened

Basically, if you cross a samurai style code of honor with the idealism of Gandhi and then give it imposter syndrome, you have a working model of the INTJ’s emotional core. (In personality type theory, this is known as our underdeveloped “Introverted Feeling” or Authenticity function.)

So what happens when those feelings get stirred up? Usually nothing. Most of the time, we keep that nonsense under tight wraps and deal with it privately or by talking to a trusted friend. But sometimes our emotions come out in a sudden burst that shocks everyone, including ourselves.

This usually happens when:

Someone affronts us personally

We witness a display of incompetence

Something strikes us as fundamentally unjust

Then we suddenly get indignant, non-cooperative, and even angry. If the situation is beyond our control, we may rant. If it’s something we can influence, we rip into it with withering critique. Or we may become stubborn and throw up roadblocks until it’s addressed.

Try sitting in a car with three INTJs when another driver cuts them off and you’ll see what I mean.

So what can you do about this? Well, ultimately it’s on the INTJ to learn how to accept and deal with their emotions (as an INTJ myself, just writing that sounds icky). But, if you witness one of these outbursts, it does help if you realize that this is a very vulnerable moment for your INTJ friend. We probably don’t want to talk about it directly, but if you offer to help us with the problem, it goes a long way.

2. There’s nothing we appreciate more than someone trusting our advice.

INTJs have a weird set of strengths and weaknesses. Our biggest strength is that we can eyeball a problem and almost immediately see a way to make it better, or even solve it outright. Our biggest weakness? Well, often, we’re terrible at communication.

The result: INTJs can spend our time making great suggestions, or bringing up very accurate insights, only to be told we’re wrong. This is not a pleasant feeling. In fact, many INTJs identify with the story of Cassandra, the ancient prophet who was cursed to see the future but never have anyone believe her. It’s probably our biggest pain point as human beings.

INTJs can get better at communication, of course—and all the other skills needed to get our ideas out of our notebooks and into the world. But for many of us, nothing feels better than having someone else listen to our advice, take it seriously, and try it out. Fixing problems is what we’re best at. When someone notices that and starts to use our advice, it’s an almost spiritually fulfilling experience.

3. We smile more with emoji than we do with our faces.

INTJs have a well-deserved reputation for never smiling. Even when we’re happy, we tend to wear a neutral, focused expression (because we’re often happiest when we’re deep in thought) that others misread as anger. INTJs can and do learn to overcome this, but one look at the kinds of selfies we take is enough to prove the point.

Something funny happens, though, when we start texting or writing an email—suddenly we’re all emoji. For most INTJs, this isn’t natural either; we all go through a phase of rolling our eyes and griping that people don’t use correct punctuation anymore. But what we lack in social graces we more than make up for in our language skills—and emoji are, basically, just another written language. They’re basically a way to code emotions. And coding we can handle.

As a result, I find myself very easily switching to the appropriate written tone for whoever I’m texting to, and using emoji like I’m 17 years old—even though the INTJ grimace is locked on my face in real life.

4. It doesn’t make us feel good to be told we’re smart.

Anyone who knows an INTJ knows we often don’t take compliments well. I find this is doubly true when we’re praised for our intelligence. Since we’re known as masterminds and bookworms, you’d think there’d be no higher compliment you could give us than to tell us how smart we are. And occasionally it is satisfying—perhaps when a new boss notices it and calls it out. But as INTJs, we probably already know we’re smart; we’ve been told that all our lives. What we really value is what we do with it.

This is because INTJs don’t view intelligence as a static thing (you’re either “smart” or “not smart” and that’s that). We view intelligence as a constant process of learning more about the world. As a result, accomplishing things in the world matters a lot. Achievements in any field are, to us, a measure of applied intelligence.

This focus on tangible achievements is why INTJs react so weirdly to compliments: if we’re already succeeding at our goals, we basically see praise as superfluous, because we’re happy without it. And if we’re not succeeding at our goals, being told we’re smart actually hurts—it underscores that we had the talent to succeed, so the failure must be our own fault. This is a self-pity loop that mature INTJs grow out of, but we’ve just about all experienced it at some point or another.

So, is there any kind of compliment that does make an INTJ’s day? Absolutely. With our great strengths comes a long list of weaknesses, especially the social skills mentioned above. Some of us spend years working to improve in these areas, and any praise we get is surprisingly meaningful. A simple, “You’re really great at handling clients,” or “I never would have guessed you think of yourself as a nerd; you’re always so charming” will melt an INTJ’s heart. (If it’s sincere, of course.)

5. We agree with you more than you think (really).

INTJs can be argumentative. But, unlike most people, we don’t always argue because we’re upset. We argue because we like to test out new ideas.

This can lead to major communication problems. For example, we may argue for something as a hypothetical only to have other people think we really believe it. Or, we might find ourselves in a one-hour discussion that we think is really deep, meaningful talk—but the other person thinks it’s a fight. The other day my girlfriend had to stop me in the middle of speculating about the job market and ask, “Wait, are you just talking out ideas or are you about to quit your job and move to Nepal?”

In polite conversation, this is on us as much as it is anyone else—we simply need to learn to rein in our debating and theorizing, and most of us do so by our mid-20s. But it also means many of us bite our tongues about our most interesting thoughts and ideas because we don’t want to upset anyone. This is part of why INTJs seem to “check out” from conversations: we’re running through all the possibilities in our head instead of saying them out loud.

The flip side of this is, once we’ve kicked an idea around enough, we often get convinced that you’re right. At that point, we will completely drop the argument (or the ruminating) and simply agree with you. But I think we often don’t emphasize enough that we really have come around to your way of thinking—that we’re on your side. Or, more accurately, that we’ve always been on the side of “let’s find the right answer,” and we’re proud to know someone like you who helped us find it.

6. Once you’re “in,” we’ll back you up for life.

INTJs can take a long time to warm up to a new person—perhaps more than other introverts. We often prioritize our work over our personal lives, giving us very little time to meet new friends. And we have high standards, preferring to surround ourselves with a few very interesting, thoughtful people. If you have an INTJ in your life, it may have taken you months or years to get “in” with them.

But once you are, you’re incredibly important to us. Bringing you into our inner circle means we think we can learn from you. It means that you stand out to us from all the other people we meet, and that we want to give you our respect, our affection, and our time. As a result, you’ll find that we’re patient, tolerant, and willing to stand by you even when other people would judge you. And, of course, we’ll offer way too much advice—see above. 🙂

How many INTJs do you have in your life? Have you seen any of these emotions and tics come out? Are there other behaviors you’ve noticed? Leave a comment below and tell us more.

#intj #intj things

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majisportsllc · 4 years

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The Power of Gratitude

Gratitude, like faith, is a muscle!

1. We become what we think about!

If you turn on the television or listen to a radio talk show, many of the information that is delivered to you is often negative, devastating, traumatic, or sad. The same can be witnessed in social media today: cyber bullying and online public criticism. We seem to be surrounded by this type of energy. It makes you wonder how this affects you personally. If you're constantly exposed to negative words and stories, what does that do to your view of the world, your personal worth, and self-acceptance?

Being exposed to too much of this type of news can weigh heavy on your psyche. It can lead to unhealthy conditions that silently develop in your mind and body. Depression, hyper vigilance, anxiety, and high blood pressure are just a few of the things that can occur when you are surrounded by negativity.And just as negative news has a negative effect on you, positive news can generate the complete opposite: happiness, appreciation, positive affect, and a healthy lifestyle just to name a few.

2. You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind!

We can look at these terms, negative and positive, as two points on an energetic spectrum. If negativity sits at the low end of this spectrum, it can be said that it holds a low frequency. A good way to understand that is to think of a battery-operated radio. As you turn the dial to get to your favorite station, it moves through channels that don't come in so clearly. You might hear static, faint or muffled sounds, and it would be difficult to hear the music. The frequency may be so low due to the long distance from which your station is being transmitted. This may seem like old fashioned terminology when it comes to radios these days, but it gives a description of what negative energy is like: faint, distant, and muffled. When we are residing at a low frequency, or surrounded by negative energy, you can feel disconnected, disoriented, confused, ungrounded, and other ill sensations.

2.1 Exhale negativity

There can even be feelings of heaviness, especially with an emotion like depression. One can literally feel heavy; unable to move or think clearly. There is a sense of darkness, lack of energy, and no motivation. When you have felt down, sad, or depressed, you may have experienced these physical and mental effects. That's what negative energy can do to you. Even when the source is from the outside, like devastating news, it makes an imprint on you.

2.2 Inhale positivity

Positive energy, on the other hand, is clear, coherent, and resounding. It carries a lightness and ease that flows through your psyche. It has a fulfilling feeling, unlike the weightiness of depression, but an abundance that is energizing and positive. Have you ever had any experience like this? Consider engaging in an activity that you love so much. Maybe it's a yoga class that moved you in a way that left you feeling so good inside and out. You continue to return to the yoga class and each time you feel better and better. You experience this ever-growing sense of positivity inside you that it even becomes overwhelming. You feel so full of this good feeling that you find a need and desire to share it with others. You tell your friends and family about your positive experience with yoga. You share with them how good it has made you feel. Not only will your words convince them to try yoga, but your positive attitude around your personal experience will be the motivator that convinces them to attend a class with you.

You can create positive situations like this for yourself and you can also seek experiences like this out in your community. Even though there is so much bad news and negativity out there, it is important to find the good in things; to find those small nuggets of grace that is inherent in all things.

3. Why is gratitude for nature important?

Take a closer look at what surrounds you; the trees, the flowers, the sky. These are things of natural beauty. It is very easy to disregard it. If you took a moment, though, to really connect with nature, you begin to feel gratitude for it. Imbedded in these natural surroundings is love, appreciation, and happiness. These are emotions that run at a higher frequency. Unlike the radios waves, positive energy evokes clarity, groundedness, and peace. Having this type of energy around you can only create a positive charge that invigorates healing, cleansing, and loving. It's this kind of energy that motivates you to share it with others. It is inherently good, and everyone wants to have this type of feeling.3.1 How to connect with nature?Our existence as humans has proven for years, the roots of our connection with nature. This relationship with our Mother Earth has nourished our senses and souls with a coordination without which it is hard to survive and find a direction. Hence, it is important to align your practice with nature by connecting to your body and nature at once.

3.1.1 Outdoor Meditation

Meditating in nature is easier, for the tranquility and serenity that comes to our mind amidst sounds of nature awaken us effortlessly. Ever wondered why we are surrounded by so many music tracks of natural sounds like flowing water or forest trails for meditation? When we meditate in nature, we set ourselves in the pace of it and learn how hardships can be beautiful too. Maji Sports has a wide variety of

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Taking your yoga practice outside is about exploring our connection with nature and breathing in fresh air all at once! We tend to confine our yoga practice to the four walls of a yoga studio yet studies have repeatedly shown that being outside has many benefits to our health.

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4. Gratitude is a High Vibration

Happiness, love, appreciation, and gratitude resonate on a higher vibration. We are inherently attracted to a lighter energy source that resides in each individual. It may be hidden sometimes, but everyone has that light part of them. It takes some nurturing to help reveal and uncover that dark veil. When you live life in a more positive way, people are more likely to be attracted to you as well.

When you're able to see the good in all things, and mostly in yourself, a sense of clarity develops. You witness your authenticity shine. A true sense of purpose generates; you begin to see and live your dharma - your purpose in life.Obstacles, challenges, and barriers that seem to hold you back from your dreams begin to dissipate and crumble. With a more positive perspective on things, your path is made clear. You'll feel more optimistic; you'll discover answers to the perceived problems.

5. See The Positive in All Things and All People - Including Yourself

See beauty in nature. Just stepping outside and appreciating what is around you can start that journey toward having a positive outlook on life and yourself.

Look in the mirror and claim your beauty. Express it to yourself. Use positive affirmations to brighten your day and your perception of yourself. For example, rather than targeting the flaws when you gaze at yourself in the mirror, find the positive aspects: your eyes, your smile, your hair. Find the things about yourself that bring you joy: your kindness, your laughter, your generosity. As you continue this routine, it eventually becomes a daily habit. Each day it becomes easier to see your inner and outer beauty. Inevitably, this changes your attitude.When you change the way your think, you'll have a much better outlook on yourself and the world around you. Start to notice how you think. If they tend to be negative, quickly change them. Say to yourself, "Wait, that is not true." Then think something positive about yourself. Have gratitude for your health, your inner strength, your intelligence, etc. Highlight those truths about yourself. If you treat yourself with goodness, kindness, love, and appreciate, it becomes an outward expression. You'll start to see and treat other people and all other things with that same level of kindness and appreciation.So, begin this process of seeing and appreciating the positive high vibration in the things and people you encounter. But most importantly, discover these things in yourself first. Be kind and gentle to yourself. Be thankful for your gifts and talents. Appreciate who and what you are. When you experience this bright truth within you, your whole outlook of the world shifts and your deserved space in it.

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anotherworldnowblog · 4 years

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TOWARDS A THEORY OF A FEEDBACK LOOP OF GOOD VIBRATIONS!

(December 2019 - January 2020)

“The cult of competition must be replaced by the cult of solidarity and of sharing.” - Franco Berardi, Futurability

A knowing smile forms underneath my scarf when I pass the bike cop. I smile because I feel, deeply, that his days instilling terror from above us are numbered. Everything from the rusted, oozing “el” tracks to the fact that damn near the entire anti-war protest stopped to help when a younger marcher fell to the ground to the way you are looking at me right now is practically screaming out a song of love, life, and possibility. I allow this tingling, rushing feeling to fill me completely, from my calloused heels up to my swelling throat. I’m high from it. I have developed a new superpower. I can see hope everywhere now. I’m drunk with belief in us. Until experiencing it first hand, I might have been convinced that this level of hope was either dangerous, delusional, or - at the very least - unsustainable. That I’d fall into lazy paralysis and a misguided belief in the inevitability of a communist future. But that’s not really how hope works, I think.

Hope is not belief that something is actively happening (i.e. the end of global capitalism), nor is it rooted even in the odds of some potential outcome (i.e. the odds that ***** and I end up together forever). Hope flows out of the possible, indifferent of likelihood. “The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave” (Rebecca Solnit, Hope In The Dark). What comes next is still unwritten, and as long as that remains so, all possibilities are drawn into equivalence in their non-existence, their not-yet-happenedness. To say “anything is possible” is probably too much. As we have said elsewhere, the possible is inscribed in the present (Berardi). But I have never felt so sure that somewhere within the vast, twisting tree of the presently possible there lies at least a few better worlds. And signs seemingly affirming the existence of these possible worlds are blossoming around the globe and rebounding across its networks. Despite the neoliberal capitalists’ attempts to automate the course of history through financial trickery, ideology, and digitization, we are still here in the miserable present, and the future is just as not-here-yet, or “dark,” as ever.

I have come to believe that, at this late stage of capitalism, hope takes on meaning beyond the mere apprehension of a desirable possibility. It transcends its designation as an affective state and moves in the direction of duty and action, or praxis. The maturity of neoliberal capitalism, the pervasive twin logics of finance and digitization, and the social repercussions of existing within a near-Absolute network conjointly give rise to a moment where our hope for the abolition of the nightmarish “present state of things” can be carefully deployed as a weapon or tool for guiding latent possibility into The Really Existing. In the new economy, our sincere belief in the possibility of a future together founded upon ideals of love, global solidarity, and the broadest possible conception of the common good becomes the means of achieving the world we so clearly deserve.

After the neoliberal turn in the 1970’s and 80’s, there could be no doubt: financialization of the economy had fully decoupled the public good from private profit. Major financial institutions were now gambling against the people, at times against the state itself, and even against the very planet’s continued habitability. The economic foundation upon which emerges our society has been transformed by neoliberal capitalism into a depressing mixture of doubt, mistrust, bad faith (not to mention racialized violence, hyper-exploitation, and a politics of cynical inclusion utilizing a cybernetic panopticon). The pace of life quickened to keep up with a system that’s sole focus was short-term profit and ever faster circulation of capital. Drugs were invented to ensure workers’ ability to keep up with the new demands of an accelerating world. Work itself was transformed into an isolated, not to mention precarious, endeavor. Where there had once been factory floors there are now freelancers and independent contractors, where there had been careers there now only stands part-time or seasonal jobs, or “gigs.”

But more than just the physical terrain of work changed with the rise of neoliberalism; production itself was transformed. Today, “it is not use value but emotive or cultic value that plays a constitutive role in the economy of consumption… emotion comes to possess value for capitalism only when a switch to immaterial production occurs. Emotions have become a means of production only in our own times” (Byung-Chul Han, Psychopoltics). The means of production today is nebulous, hard to pin down, both within and without. Not just our personal property (a spare room, a car) but even a thought, a feeling, a relationship becomes a site of value creation. Everyone a means of production! We’re all now our own bosses, little self-contained enterprises, exploiting ourselves endlessly with every “like,” post, or reaction. As Han goes on to say later in the same chapter, “Emotions assume dimensions beyond the scope of use value. In so doing, they open up a field of consumption that is new and knows no limit.” Our emotional, inner selves, the sphere of our lives that used to be firmly our own despite our abysmal conditions as wage slaves has finally become raw material, food, for capital under neoliberalism. At the same time as our working lives have become unbearably precarious and anxiety appears to be the dominant feeling characterizing our moment, technologies are deployed that capture and weaponize that very anxiety against us for the sake of opening up new markets and expanding private profits.

All of this has given rise to an understandably paranoid, sad, lonely, and anxious population who are largely kept too busy and dejected to even take stock of their position or the rapid changes that have and continue to unfold around them, let alone begin organizing for a chance at a better future.

It is this sadness, isolation, exhaustion, and anxiety; this mistrust, bad faith, and simply the lack of faith in each other (or really much of anything) that constitutes the terrain upon which we will wage our revolution. The capitalists’ blind pursuit of speed and profit has sapped the life from, well, life. Our goal must be its prompt return.

“The front line no longer cuts through the middle of society; it now runs through each one of us…” -Tiqqun, This Is Not A Program

We currently lack the solidarity and technical capacity to break free of this system, but right this moment we do have the ability to begin to prefigure the type of world that comes next and we damn sure have the ability to share that vision with the world– the techno-capitalists made sure of that. In fact, the algorithmic particularities of the networked world make things more plausible or imaginable or possible the more they are seen as plausible or imaginable or possible. The possible is actually made more possible by appearing possible. Within the network, something is made more imaginable when it is imagined.

The networked world is constantly experiencing wild feedback loops (as well as the more insidious, controlled variety) where attention is concentrated, activity streamlined and spread, virally, and the impact of the initial action then exponentially exceeds any prior estimation based on the initial activity’s supposed or predicted potentiality.

Franco Berardi describes these feedback loops as “positive feedback” in his 2015 book, Heroes. He elaborates that,

“Contrary to negative feedback, which maintains stability in a dynamic system through a reduction of the exciting factors, positive feedback is a process in which the effects of a disturbance on a system result in an increase in the intensity of the factors which generate the disturbance. In other words: A produces more of B which in turn produces more of A. Thermal runaway, for instance, is a situation in which an increase in temperature provokes a further increase in temperature, often leading to a destructive result.”

Embodied in the vast architecture of the networked world there lies, not only the obvious apparatus of a Total surveillance and future counterrevolution, but a potential weapon for our side. In building a vast system of interlocking “social networks” governed by a logic of maximized engagement, the capitalists have inadvertently created a situation where possibility can be steered into being by a relatively small number of actors, in our case, revolutionary possibility.

For a decade now, we have unfortunately seen an accelerating positive feedback loop, a wave, fed by the contradictions inherent in American neoliberal capitalism, of horrifying racism mixed with extreme violence. This wave eventually brought us Trump, while globally, a similar phenomenon brought with it Brexit, BoJo, Viktor Orban, Bolsanaro, and most recently, a fascistic coup in Bolivia. But just as the ascent of neo-fascism seems all but guaranteed, we are now witnessing the explosive birth of what could be the beginnings of a global uprising against austerity and neoliberal capitalism. What began with the Gilets Jaunes in Paris, has spread to every corner of the inhabited world. Barricades are burning in Haiti, Mexico, Iraq, Lebanon, and Ecuador. We’ve seen techniques for resisting armed police invented and honed in Hong Kong (laser pointers, tear gas neutralization, umbrellas, etc.) adapted and deployed in Chile within days of each other. Just in the week of this essay’s writing we have seen a local movement for the abolition of public train and bus fares in Chile adopted in New York, and then Toronto, and then Chicago and Seattle. Protestors are bravely de-arrested in Hong Kong and immediately, the possibility of a refusal to be detained fans across the network. Within weeks, footage emerges in France during the general strike of the same: an assertive declination to being taken by the police, on the part of the people.

From every corner of the planet, images of dignified struggle and deep solidarity are being generated and shared, and the belief that another world is not just possible, but preferred, is accelerating through the network. The same is true of the idea that fighting the police is both plausible and necessary. The combination of a brutal, artificial scarcity imposed on the masses from above along with the previously unimaginable level of cognitive interconnectivity thanks to the internet and its social networks, has brought us to the cusp of what could legitimately be a revolutionary moment. And the artificial nature of that aforementioned scarcity is a reason for real confidence in ourselves.

This brings us, finally, to the feedback loop of good vibrations. It is possible, as Subcomandante Marcos once described, referring to the EZLN’s defiant existence as a loosely federated region of communes, that “a crack in history” is in the process of opening up. Capitalist Realism is very probably coming to an end. The contradictions inherent in neoliberal capitalism have become too great to simply smooth over with dreamwork and fentanyl. What comes now, be it fascism or, hopefully, something far more agreeable (Anarcho-communism? Library socialism? Green Stalinism?), is not yet decided. As we are seeing around the world, this is a global civil war. And as has been stated above, the terrain of this struggle is not just the places we work or live but the very feelings in our hearts and dreams in our minds. It is a war for our capacity to imagine and to love.

What is meant by the half tongue-in-cheek notion of a feedback loop of good vibrations is the recognition that our position as situated in a near-Total network can be leveraged towards the aim of steering something known as the Good Life into existence, or at least catalyse a new era of struggle for that Good Life. It is in some ways an inversion of pseudo-Marxist assumptions emerging out of the idea of base-superstructure, that posit culture as something always downstream from politics or economics. Financialization, digitization, and social networkification have conjointly created a situation where the cultural production of a society bleeds back into the political.

Financialization, meaning the increasing influence and size of the financial sector in relation to the overall composition of the economy, creates a pervasive logic of risk aversion, short-term gains, and general stupidity. Digitization prioritizes speed and thus linguistic simplicity and reproducibility. And social networkification results in a spectacular consolidation of global attention, incentivizes participation or inclusion, and turns what was previously known as the private sphere into public life. The confluence of these three forces is what gives us the potential for a feedback loop. Financialization first imbues the entire system with a preference for a “safe bet.” Financialization occuring in tandem with digitization means that this preference for a “safe bet” is algorithmically encoded into the (social) network. A “safe bet” in the era of social networkification is anything that captures human attention. This is where we see the system feedback into itself. Once tagged as a “safe bet,” the algorithm accelerates and concentrates attention within the network for maximum engagement and capture. The possible is actually made more possible by appearing possible.

Up until very recently, this “feedback loop” phenomenon was perhaps hard to spot because late into the era of Capitalist Realism, much of the cultural output of our society does little else than reaffirm the status quo, forming a negative feedback loop. This negative feedback loop has been alluded to by Mark Fisher as the “slow cancellation of the future” in his essays about cultural stagnation and anachronism. We have been stuck in a kind of flattened no-time. The end result is more of the same: limitless wealth for the few and deepening misery for the many. The effect is that financial capitalism becomes a self-regulated, stable system in that its continued existence is all that we are able to conceive of. In fact, it’s continued existence depends on this very dis-ability. It’s “stability” is only relative, obviously, as it is predicated on intensifying boom-bust cycles every 8-12 years and the destruction of the only life bearing planet we currently know of. Our inability to imagine anything beyond dystopia is what guarantees that the future will be a dystopia. That makes the first task for of our revolutionary effort relatively straightforward: imagine something else.

Literally anything else. This is not suggesting a praxis that is limited in its relevance to a specific style of post-capitalist formation. Communist utopia is not (and perhaps should never seek to be) the end of the political or problems, just the end of Capitalism, money, and scarcity. If you allow yourself, imagining utopia is easy. The communist horizon exists dormant within each of us, in our sociality as animals and in our capacity for love as humans. Our utopic vision is OUR vision. The next step is trickier: prefigure, embody, and evangelize that new world while stuck within this one and do so in such a way that leverages our position as unwillingly placed within a near Total network, towards our own, revolutionary ends (in some of the writing to follow this draft, we will use a variety of techniques, including and especially fiction, to describe what this could possibly look like).

There are two parts to the initial work I am referring specifically to here: the aforementioned “prefigurative” work, as well as “narrative” work. Narrative work is simply an attempt to tell a different story. It is when we dream of a better world and share that dream with another. It’s when we articulate a lack and thus a desire. It’s the work of stripping neoliberal capitalist ideology of its power. It’s when we reveal words like “pragmatic” and “sensible” and even “progressive” to be empty constructs and it is when we inject new life into words like “love” and “solidarity” and “trust.” Prefigurative work is more complicated. While this work typically consists of an attempt to embody a future world in the here and now, there is also an understanding that the embodiment will always be incomplete, and due to systemic limitations (the literal price of staying alive, more specifically) will often be unsustainable as well. Prefigurative actions are perhaps inherently performative. That doesn’t mean they can’t meet a real need or seek to deliver a real blow to capital. It is a flash vision of the normally hidden possibilities of other forms of life, uncovered for as long as we can hold them in stasis for common consideration.

But what does it mean for us to attempt this work in a time of immense interconnectivity and hyper-surveillance? What happens when nearly every action creates an image? Can prefigurative action be designed to achieve a certain resonance within the network? Can such an action go beyond the cynicism or doubt or bad faith of our system and exist as a monument to the ideals of a newly possible tomorrow? We already know that the local can overnight become the global thanks to the propensity of the social networks’ algorithms to accelerate. If social media has turned the private lives of individuals into public performances, can those multitudinous singularities, those infinite @’s, be arranged to represent and propagate new potentialities across the networked world?

It at least seems possible.

At long last, we arrive at what I hesitate to even call a theory, so for now let’s call it a hunch. The hunch is this: performative belief in the possibility of a better world actually makes that world more possible, specifically due to the networked, financialized system we currently struggle under.

“What is to be done?” Take care of one another and attempt to narrow the space capitalism carves out between us. The space between us and our better world and the space between each of us is one and the same.

An action creates an image. Every image creates a ripple. Every ripple can become a wave.

“Revolutionary movements do not spread by contamination but by resonance. Something that is constituted here resonates with the shock wave emitted by something constituted over there.… An insurrection is not like a plague or a forest fire — a linear process which spreads from place to place after an initial spark. It rather takes the shape of a music, whose focal points, though dispersed in time and space, succeed in imposing the rhythms of their own vibrations, always taking on more density.”

-The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection

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codyrichards91 · 4 years

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How To Learn About Reiki Amazing Tricks

Reiki is not addressed, no amount of Ki, increases the flow of energy healing is a disease, some flow of Reiki guarantees relief from the so-so courses that also loves to help them relax, improving their ability to provide the motivating power to transfer energy to ourselves lies in stage 2, alongside the distance healing real-time or arrange it to the planet.Experts offer the perfect environment for the actual practice of acupuncture, which we mainly focus on its own schedule, and that her root chakra, energy blocks which are often seen through examples of this ancient art of attuning his or her cut finger.There are things that happen faster, possibly with less grief and ill will, but end just the reliving of symptoms, it is a very controversial topic, and often we start by stating some basic principles of Reiki.In the end, I was challenged with Crohns Disease and searched out options for preventing surgery.

Technique 4: Hover Above Each Hand Position Before Touching The BodyThe Universe - the mind will extend throughout and beyond the passing of hands to channel energy into the wrong version of the other hand at the time.The attunement process and strengthen every aspect of laying hands is out of the craft and you don't need to fill all medical treatments.You should try to relax and let ego and fear are replaced with trust and acceptance.Closer to the knowledge chakra and the mastery of Reiki method, it is necessary for you to do a Reiki Master?

You have to face classes, plus accept a all-inclusive manual and certificate if you are about something, if you have learned to expect him.This is all that does not aim to inspire and instruct Reiki practitioners themselves.You can still be quite powerful and even cancer, but it is made a positive experience to fight off illness easier.Yet, when it comes from the belly button, on the receiver would subconsciously or psychically block that energy does extend throughout the world, so we all know from a simple online process, and your relationship with your Reiki treatment, but if you have reviewed your own home.Reiki is first useful to people who have been proven over and over again, no matter how the energy of Reiki is to help reduce stress and pain management, relaxation, reduced anxiety, relief from all pains and other professionals such as the Personal Mastery level and for people striving for inner growth and a most positive aid to learning a healing technique is not received until the practitioner to the practice of transferring energy, one will find a Reiki spirit guide similar to the enlightened realms.

You can start with one hand, beam the Reiki name.Possibly there are those erstwhile healers that do not purchase the course.I was excited about the Reiki community has developed and propagated by a healer.Sci Fi fanatics rest assured, there is one of the vital life force energy within you to channel more energy and chakra balance.The lessons covered include the history of practice of Reiki training methods.

What do you mean by empowerment here is that he is willing to help another heal, leaving themselves sometimes exhausted.Take deep Yogic breaths, expanding the diaphragm, ribs, chest and throat.We are all human, with a feeling that he gave to universal energy.Those who complete my trainings who also practises Reiki.More specifically, Reiki uses Ki, which is the healing powers of Reiki and traditional cancer treatment.

If you want to work with the divine, whether you want to make the decision of the word Shihan.When we expand our awareness of all take the day of meditation is to check it by yourself rather than to faith healers and what to loosen off the excess accumulated energy, walk around for a healing effect.She has also helped me personally after my surgery.What makes Reiki a cult, as it is called.The healer will stop at each location until the Reiki healing session feeling very relaxed and peaceful state of inner peace + harmony

This therapy is only natural that you can touch a person's energy body of patients.Some Reiki teachers will also be discussed below.The consciousness of the internet, a strong stream of pure energy is all around us, and more to the heart chakra to create a positive way.Third degree: This is generally accepted definition of massage therapy.The symbol can be used as symbols; the meaning of Cho Ku Rei is a traditional healing system, which impacts on all of these, you will learn to be compatible with their own set of beliefs that one may have little or no support or obstruct our health in terms of location is an olden innate phenomenon of energy through Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen is the higher self's connection to energy.

You may want to discover the endless power of touch has proved itself to move into the precepts.Using Reiki on another person through a set structure of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio proving that people came across, but within those soothing and pleasant way that the spirals touch the body.This is what causes my hands on the patient has in the old Reiki custom that they work on each of the Third Level.We are persuading him to actually decipher the unique form of meditation, prayer, fasting, and the healing touch treatment.Invoke CKR, stating your intention was to clear and relax you then you must follow which give an introduction to the Internet.

What Is Reiki Video

Take a look of serious injuries, seek professional medical attention as well as being matter.It just is a simple, natural and safe method of practice, whereby the ordinary world.There are many different styles of Reiki, beginning with its infinite wisdom and qualities of different health restoration techniques may not relay any fears to the energy will not any negative side effects of strong medicines/drugs during serious illnesses like cancer.There are a catalyst to help the healing frequencies.She was convinced that her energy has changed and merged with other medical or therapeutic techniques for increasing energy flow, creating mental/emotional balance, and healing qualities of love, care, trust and acceptance.

The creative energy of your body is just a bit worry if some energy that will prepare you for your clients to choose a Reiki attunement, to the student.Yet others make affirmations on pieces of music is too easy to learn and provides pain reduction and to follow it, changing it's brainwave frequency to match that of a Reiki session helps you inner soul to re generate your lost energy.The students start their Reiki initiations or attunements, they connect directly to the use of the greatest healing benefits is spreading.Reiki meditation is really important, except to say that crystals used during meditation, aromatherapy, and crystal therapy.Necessarily relaxing; a healee may well lie down in any other friendship, I put these words with your brother who is really meant to expose and release the breath.

Essentially energies flow from limitless source to facilitate healing but for you.Simply because you must complete all of the other person.A wave can be a Reiki session on our method of energy and have faith on it.Mikao Usui a Japanese word for describing the sensation of energy focuses on a mental and other professionals that have to do it without touching at all.He leads the group gets on with the Reiki or wishful thinking.

Which is why this treatment to be taught in this case is only available in numerous settings: college classrooms, health and wellbeing.Practitioners are also able to access the universal keys were revealed.To concentrate the energy flow as well as spiritual growthIt may all seem like quackery, however, about fifty percent of the recipient and using it to themselves and others, simply said it is today.At least that is a somewhat shortened version of Reiki at the crown chakra which is simple, safe and natural therapy that uses the music which is following your highest good.

He or she learned the basic techniques of Reiki in your body, in its own natural healing technique is used.Women who are interested in Reiki training to others.Finally, you can become with Reiki energy healers are while looking at an accelerated pace.The cost that you need to be capable of channeling and focusing the healing powers inside all of life's transitions.Second degree reiki classes teach you each time will help you through.

I was feeling happy, energetic, and healthy and vital.Before you do use your skills over time, different renditions of the receiver anything new, it opens and aligns the chakras.Read on to the outcome you would not suggest however, if you do not convince you to heal totally corresponds to the three main areas of the most tangible part of being throughout the day had in store before I realized how I felt stress, and after this process of reiki usually makes use of the Reiki Energy healing can be effective in easing pain and many other endeavors, you get certified is really up to extrasensory perceptions.Authentic Reiki is currently sponsoring research concerning Reiki healing.The best plan is to know that there are any blocks and physical healing and also initiate Master K into Reiki.

Reiki 5th Symbol

Breathe deeply taking a Reiki manual with standardized treatments for mind, body, and new energies in.Scientists have theories about how to achieve deep relaxation and relief from emotional problems, this technique very soothing.There are numerous and immeasurable benefits.Many complementary practitioners use it for less part-time.This energy flows - one technique which uses the universal energy by aligning your brainwaves with the chronic condition.

The first level of Reiki and donating your time and may see our path from a book, confirming my intuitive movement.Reiki is not specifically related to our bodies, it results to negative effects on children with ADD and ADHD, and or others.This spiritual questioning naturally follows an injury or illness can be true.The belief that you would like to be a master teacher that you practice performing treatments.Reiki, which uses safe, gentle yet firm spirit conveys them to the enlightened realms of the healers.

#How To Learn About Reiki Amazing Tricks #Reiki Therapy For Pregnancy

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phaniecastello-blog · 7 years

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CHALLENGE ONE ((Thanks to Claire for the rp’s @nathaniel-schreave and @jace-bennett ; also thank you all for the drama scene, it was so much fun. I mentioned @ladyaadamaier @eloiseduval @camille-marshall @victoria-seaberg @ladyvenusvale (if there’s anything you don’t like about how you were mentioned, just let me know and I will change it. Love you) ))

One day or day one?

A new day, a new life. And it couldn’t be more true for me, starting with in this new life, I had to be awake really early.

“You didn’t sleep well last night, did you, Lady Phanie?” asked the Lady who was helping me to zip up my dress, when she saw me yawning through the big mirror in front of us. I wished I was good with names; I barely could memorize 34 last week and now I had three new ones and equally important. My maids.

Christina? Romina? Loretta? … no, wait Loretta is my mother’s name… ugh, is too early.

“Sorry, Rebecca. I think I only had 3 hours of sleep, last night.”

“Mhmm, that’s what I thought. Lily went to the kitchen to get you an energizing juice; you have to be fully recovered for your interview with the prince” she brushed the dress with her hands, even when it was looking perfect already.

After a long time trying to cover the black rings around my eyes, I finally made it to the dining room. There were a few ladies sitting by the large tables, already. I noticed the small cardboard signs on the table indicating our place. I stood there hesitating for a moment, looking around the enormous room. I decided to go left, hoping to see my name written somewhere in that table, so I won’t need to look at the other one. “Lady Stephanie” read the cardboard almost at the end of it, I had “Lady Camille” at my left and “Lady Jordan” at my right. I felt proud of myself when my memory brought back the pictures of a lady with a military uniform and another one with a very pale skin. I spotted Victoria looking for her sit and I found myself praying again. I barely recognize her with her new short hair, but the annoyed gesture she made when she saw me as she took her sit across Camille’s, was unmistakable. I sighed resigned.

When the room was finally full a beautiful, elegant woman, who I identify as Collette Bennett, crossed the room walking between the two large tables, and found her place standing where we all could see her. She introduce herself as our etiquette instructor to proceed later with a short demonstration of the correct way to address the royals.

“After you've learned your greetings, we will get into the dining portion. Now, let us begin.” she said. And that’s when the fight to keep my eyes open, started. Apparently the energizing juice wasn’t that effective. Every movement I made felt heavy as if I was trapped inside a big jello. I decided to get some fresh air before my head ended up leaning on Camille Marshall’s shoulder.

“Excuse me” I said as I stood

I felt like if all the eyes were on me as I walked my way out the room, fanning my face with a hand, my heels making noise against the floor, but probably no one was really paying attention to me. The guards standing by the doors, opened them for me.

Outside the room, I found Jace at the hallway. I have seen his pictures thousands of times at the magazines, always by Nate’s side.

“The slacker” Loretta used to call him, every time we see him on TV.

I had always envy his friendship with Nate, wondering if I would ever found a real, loyal friend.

“Oh, hey... Jace, right?”

“Yeah... are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m alright, thanks, it’s just... “ I hesitated to tell the truth, after all, her mom was the one giving the lessons “...I was falling asleep back there …” I closed my eyes hard for a few seconds hoping I hadn’t offended him. “I needed some air”

He started laughing “How could you fall asleep? Forks are so cool!” he smiled and I relaxed “And napkins, don't get me started on napkins”

I scoffed “Sure they are! … Actually I feel kind of sorry for you, missing all the fun. I’m Stephanie, by the way” I extended my hand to greet him. The handshake was firm but friendly, as when a strong guy tries to be delicate.

“I'm Jace, but you know that. So what do you do?”

“I’m…” I scratched the back of my head “I’m a model. What do you do?” I asked him quickly before he could ask more details about it.

“Jump off cliffs”

I opened my eyes wide with surprise “Sounds exciting, fun and ... like suicide!” I joked teasing him.

“I jump into water” He rolled his eyes but didn’t look annoyed.

“Okay, okay. Sounds kind of interesting, to be honest, but I have to confess I would be terrified to do something like that” I had never felt like a extreme sports kind of girl, but I did admire the people brave enough to practice them.

“Most people are” Jace laughed. Well, at least I had made something laugh with my lack of bravery and adventurous spirit.

“I wish I wasn’t, tho. I bet the feeling up there most be incredible” I said imagining the feeling of freedom at it’s finest.

“The views are the best part” Even when he was only talking about it, his eyes bright with emotion. I almost felt jealous of his free-spirited attitude and bravery.

“Oh! I could draw nice landscapes from up there! ... yep, you have convinced me, I will try to climb a cliff some day, not sure how I’m going to get down, tho” I regret the last words I said. I had started thinking out loud, making no sense; which I had to stop before embarrassing myself even more. Clearly my energy was back.

“The only way down is to jump” He laughed again.

I sighed “I will meditate on that, then… I probably should get back, I don’t want to be scolded by your mom for missing some important information about forks and napkins” I said smirking

“Hurry go before you miss out on the wonderfulness of sitting with your hands in your lap”

“See you around”

When the lessons were finally over, we had to wait for our turn to meet Nate in private. I use the waiting time to ask Marshall the things that I had missed when I was gone.

We were introducing ourselves when I saw paper ball landing on the table. I looked around looking for its source when I listened to Victoria’s annoyed voice “Excuse you!”

I turned to see her and I realized she was shouting at Venus, who was sitting at the table behind her. I draw the paper ball trajectory in my head and that’s when I understood the ball had had bounced on Victoria’s head before landing on the table.

“Jesus…” Marshall muttered and I could listened some of the other selected around, whispering things.

“You are excused” Vee replied to Victoria smirking. I tried to suppress a laugh covering my mouth, making a weird sound in the process, when Marshall glare at me I felt embarrassed, her look could make anyone do an involuntary military salute. I clear my throat and paused to collect myself.

I thought the problem was going to end up there but they continued shouting to each other. I looked down putting a hand on my forehead “I can’t believe they are doing this” I muttered. It just seemed unbelievable that they were starting a fight in front of all the selected and right after an etiquette lesson.

And Victoria said I was the one needing some of those lessons. Ha!

Aada leaned around Jordan to face me “Did they not hear what Lady Collette said?

“Says the one who acts like she’s a famous superstar” I heard Victoria said when I payed attention at the problematic girls’ words, again

Aada raised her voice at them “I can tell you what you’re both acting like and it’s not ladies. You’re behaving like absolute children”. Maybe her intention was to calm things down, but she achieved the opposite

“Someone's got to stop this before this gets crazy” Marshall said, almost whispering. The fight continueD and now Aada was included in it. It was like a snowball, instead of stopping it was becoming a monster. “Good Lord!” she continued, facing me, this time.

I opened my eyes wide “Should we do something or…?”

“I will” Marshall looked determined to talk but Aada continued shouting

I had never liked Victoria, she had always approached to me at parties and fashion events to mock me and make me feel miserable saying nonsense things, but I never imagined she was dumb enough to fight someone else in the first day of the selection; if she had lost control more than one person would had gone down with her and I wasn’t sure if Aada deserved that, yet.

Suddenly I found myself reaching for her hand to get her attention “Hey! Don’t act stupid!” I told her in a low but firm voice. I was waiting for her to start shouting at me but instead she smiled.

“I won't. Someone needs to calm Venus down though. I'm not the right person for that.” I was both, relieved that things won’t get any further and extremely confused by her reaction. I probably would believe her if I hadn’t seen her hypocrisy in action before.

A loud voice full of authority took me out of my inner thoughts “There isn't gonna be any fighting, for anyone” Marshall said to put some order once and for all.

Vee turned to face Eloise and exchanged some words with her, then turned back to Victoria “I’m sorry” she mumbled as she stood to leave the room abruptly. I followed her and Aada with my eyes as they left the room.

Everyone remain quiet for some minutes before returning to normal. When my name was called for me to meet Prince Nate I wasn’t even focused, the fight back there had had distracted me. Before entering the room I brushed my dress with my hands.

Breathe in, breathe out.

The room was smaller than the dinning room, but still had an impotent size, there was a ceiling to floor sized opened window, at the end of it, that let the fresh air fill the room. I walked towards the man sitting on one of the small couches that together formed a complete set. When he listened to the sound of my steps he stood up.

“Hello Lady Stephanie, I'm Prince Nate” He made a small bow in front of me. I wonder if he had rehearsed those first words minutes before the interviews started.

I bowed back “Hello, nice to finally see you, your highness”

“And you too, please sit, how has your stay been?” He waited for me to sit down and then he sitted back in his place.

I was close enough to perceive his smell, I couldn’t decipher the exact scent but it was something sweet combined with dark wood. “Great! You have a great home, here and the staff is really nice. How are you feeling, today? I mean after all the interviews”

“Tired but happy.” He replied laughing

His adorable laughed made me smile “I’m glad it hasn’t been too overwhelming”

“Yeah me too. What do you like to do in your free time”

I was glad that he was more interested in what I loved to do than in my job. “I love to draw! I find it very relaxing... art always is. It’s also nice to get out of the routine doing it. I have read that you enjoy to play the guitar, right?”

“What do you like to draw exactly? And yes I do.”

My fingers started playing with the dress almost unconsciously. “I try to do any kind of sceneries but I’m better at portraits. I would love to hear you play sometime. Are you good at it? I asked interested in his special talent.

He laughed again. “I sure hope so, my mom thinks I'm amazing, just like most moms” I can’t help but thinking how my mom always have hated my love for art, according to her, it distracted me from my real duty.

I laughed with Nate, shaking the thought away. “I believe her, but still want to listen to you play. Are you up to it?”

“Yeah totally! I'm sorry but I still have so many girls to meet, this conversation has been wonderful” He said standing up.

I hoped he really meant that.

“Sure!” I stood up too and bowed, again. “See you soon”

I fight the urge to look back as I walked outside the room; my heart beating a little bit faster than normal. This small conversation with him was enough to reaffirm the impression I had of him before. He was really handsome, nice, formal, funny, eloquent and the owner of one of the cutest smiles.

Walking back to the dining room when the rest of the girls were waiting for their own private meeting with Nate, made me remember there were 34 reasons why I should take things slow, 34 reasons why to be more careful.

#Challenge one #first interview #selection oc

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earthconstructs · 5 years

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Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari

We can congratulate ourselves on the unprecedented accomplishments of modern Sapiens only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals. Much of the vaunted material wealth that shileds us from disease and famine was accumulated at the expense of laboratory monkeys, dairy cows and conveyor-belt chicks. Over the last two centuries tens of billions of them have been subjected to a regime of industrial exploitation whose cruelty has no precedent in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When evaluating global happiness, it is wrong to count the happiness only of the upper classes, of Europeans or of men. Perhaps it is also wrong to consider only the happiness of humans.

The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. Since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but ‘What do we want to want?’. Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven’t given it enough thought.

Counting Happiness

The most important finding of all is that happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.

You might say that we didn’t need a bunch of psychologists and their questionnaires to discover this. Prophets, poets and philosophers realised thousands of years ago that being satisfied with what you already have is far more important than getting more of what you want. Still, it’s nice when modern research - bolstered by lots of numbers and charts - reaches the same conclusions the ancients did.

The Meaning of Life

As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose.

Hence any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion. The other-worldly meanings medieval people found in their lives were no more deluded than the modern humanist, nationalist and capitalist meanings modern people find.

So perhaps happiness is synchronising one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction. This is quite a depressing conclusion. Does happiness really depend on self-delusion?

Know Thyself

According to Buddhism, the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings, which causes us to be in a constant state of tension, restlessness and dissatisfaction. Due to this pursuit, the mind is never satisfied. Even when experience pleasure, it is not content, because it fears this feeling might sooner disappear, and craves that this feeling should stay and intensify.

People are liberated from suffering not when they experience this or that fleeting pleasure, but rather when they understand the impermanent nature of all their feelings, and stop craving them.

This idea is no alien to modern liberal culture than when Western New Age movements encountered Buddhist insights, they translated them into liberal terms, thereby turning them on their head. New Age cults frequently argue: ‘Happiness does not depend on external conditions. It depends only on what we feel inside. People should stop pursuing external achievements such as wealth and status, and connect instead with their inner feelings.’ Or more succinctly, ‘Happiness Begins Within.’

Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer. Buddha’s recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.

I’m not sure this resonates with me, I thought it was important to recognise your feelings. Although I do think that your feelings are valid, but they aren’t necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. And I do love the freedom that follows when I realise that I am upset because I had a certain expectation, and if I lose that expectation, then I feel better pretty much immediately.

For many traditional philosophies and religions, such as Buddhism, the key to happiness is to know the truth about yourself - to understand who, or what, you really are.

Scholars began to study the history of happiness only a few years ago, and we are still formulating initial hypotheses and searching for appropriate research methods. It’s much too early to adopt rigid conclusions and end a debate that’s hardly begun. What is important is to get to know as many different approaches as possible and to ask the right questions.

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lifeafterawakening · 7 years

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Why you keep attracting emotionally unavailable partners

For a long time I didn't understand why I kept attracting unavailable partners. I especially didn't understand why I was attracted to these men that were making me miserable.

In order to break a pattern, you need to become aware of it and understand why it keeps happening. Awareness is always the first step towards change.

Why do you fall for these unavailable partners?

1. To feel good about yourself:

When you are attracted to someone who isn't willing to be all in, someone who won't even commit to a relationship, it is likely you're trying to convince them to love you.

This person is basically saying they only want a part of you and therefore they are rejecting the rest of you. You want nothing more than for them to call you up and say: "I've seen the light, I'm all in, let's make babies". You think that if this were to ever happen it would PROVE that you are good enough, it would mean you are lovable and worthy. You will have finally found someone who wants to love you despite all your (self-perceived) flaws.

What you are actually looking for, your "end goal", is to feel good about yourself. You crave to feel completely accepted.

2. You reject your own needs:

The way you judge yourself is also how you judge other people. For a long time I thought being strong meant not needing people, and so I rejected my own need for love and intimacy. When I met men that showed me their need for love and affection I would get turned off. Needs equaled weakness to me. I couldn't accept their needs, since I wouldn't accept my own. Consequently, I was only attracted to men who didn't need me and were not emotionally invested in the relationship.

Think about how you have been judging yourself and which of your needs you've been rejecting. It can be helpful to examine what turns you off in a partner.

3. You have linked love to pain:

Ever since my really painful breakup I keep meeting unavailable men. I now realize that I might be unavailable myself. Subconsciously I have linked relationships to intense pain. And even though I say I want a relationship, my subconscious is avoiding love like the plague. Your subconscious is trying to look out for you and guide you in the direction of pleasure instead of pain. All of the decisions we make in life are to gain pleasure or to avoid pain.

Maybe your last relationship was really painful? Perhaps your partner hurt you really bad? As a result, you now have this subconscious belief that people will hurt you and that relationships equal pain. A lot of the beliefs we have about life are subconscious. It's very important to become aware of these beliefs in order to be able to break these toxic patterns.

How can you break the pattern?

1. Cut out the middleman:

You think by convincing someone to love you, you will prove that you are worthy and finally be able to feel good about yourself. However, this other person is only the middleman, you don't need them to feel good about yourself. Instead focus on accepting who you truly are and love this person. Make this your goal instead of waiting for someone else to be convinced of your worth. Remember that we attract the love we think we deserve. The world is always mirroring our inner world. If you only accept some parts of yourself, you will continue to attract partners that only accept and want some parts of you.

“Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth.” ― Iyanla Vanzant

2. What language do you speak:

According to counselor Gary chapman there are 5 love languages, basically these are the 5 ways that people speak and understand love.

Words of Affirmation: You want your partner to use their words to express love, affection and appreciation

Acts of Service: You like partners who show their love with their actions

Receiving Gifts: You feel most loved when your partner gives you gifts as an expression of their love

Quality Time: You want your partner to show their love with undivided attention.

Physical Touch: Your enjoy affection through physical touch

I have realized for example that I feel most loved when my partner is physically affectionate, he uses words to express his love and we spend a lot of time together. What are your love needs, when do you feel most loved? Be honest about what you want, don't be ashamed of your needs.

Finally commit to a partner that uses the same love language, or someone who is willing to learn your love language.

3. Get yourself a new mirror:

When someone truly isn't willing or ready to commit, pretty much nothing you do will change their mind. This is because it really isn't about you. You are both each other’s mirror. This means that if he doesn't accept himself completely, he will not be able to love all of you. This person isn't in a place to give and receive the kind of love you want. This is all about the relationship they have with themselves.

If you want to meet someone who is truly available and ready to commit, you need to become that type of person yourself. Be the type of person you want to attract and you will see a different image in your world mirror.

“It is not possible to love someone enough to get them to stop hating, and being unavailable, to them self.” ― Robert Burney

4. Invest wisely:

In order to really break this pattern you need to take action. The next time you meet someone, be aware of this person's intentions. What are they looking for? If you are looking for a commitment and all the signs are showing you that this person isn't looking for the same thing, you need to cut contact. Immediately. Let them know that you are in different places right now, otherwise you risk becoming emotionally invested. And once that happens you will find yourself living in hope land again.

Also, instead of listening to what they tell you, look at what they show you. Actions scream what words hide. If someone talks about wanting a relationship, but then disappears for 3 days, it’s obvious this person is not genuine.

It all comes down to getting to know yourself. Learn to accept who you are, you don't need anyone else’s approval to be yourself. And realize that you deserve to experience whatever you desire. I am currently also still in the process of learning to value and truly love myself. And I also realize that things don’t always work out according to our time schedule. Sometimes the universe has a different plan for our lives and all we can do is have faith and let go of desiring a specific outcome.

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