Magic tricks. 08/29/2010
 
Some people who have "made it" will try to tell you, through speeches, books, articles, or personal advice, that life can be the way you want it to be, and that it is only a matter of personal personal growth to make it so. They will give you ideas that your mentality is wrong, and that you only need to tweak it to make magic. They aren't lying, they are talking from personal experience. They really believe what they are saying, that they have the solution to your problems because they truly did find solutions for their problems. 

It doesn't hurt to try their approach. You will find tips and tricks on how to be optimistic and comfortable in your own skin. Ways to let the "real" you shine through. And if it works, and you find a way to be successful with their methods, then you will become one of them. At the podium of reward, you will give a speech encouraging others to never give up, and to have faith in what they believe.

But if their tricks don't work for you, you may find yourself at the point where you are giving up your dreams. Of course, you don't see it that way. You find that you are making adult decisions now, and you have learned to be more realistic about life. You will settle down at a job that is good, but not glamourous, and you'll slowly build a strong foundation on which to rest and live vicariously through other people. 

Not me, you say, that's not me. But you only say that because you find it to be such a terrible and sad state. No one wants to give up their dreams for good, and live a life of mediocrity, but that's what you are living now.

There must come a time for you to give in to the structure that has been in the process of being built for thousands of years. Your life is pre-determined, and you failed to alter that fact with your imagination, so you now are better off leaving the imagination to geniuses and artists. You can now accept that you are not one of them in trade, which is what you long ago had wished so deeply for. 

No one will buy your shit. Like it or not, you are right to accept that fact. You are better off. Leave dreams to those who can reach them, and take your place as an admirer. Live your happy and stable life until you die. Your situation is just as bittersweet as your favorite artist's work. Your song is sung by every breath of every singer, your image painted in every self-portrait of every painter. 

Take your small successes and cherish them as wonder. They are just as grand as a plaque or gold medal. Learn from your insignificant failures. They are no less meaningful than a swift and humiliating fall from the top. 


When it is time to give in, give in. Secretly hold your wishes and dreams like a lottery ticket, but use your joy as fuel.


Magic tricks are deceptions. Misdirections. No matter how good the magician, there is no altering reality to one's will. Authenticity is the antithesis to true failure, even if no one buys your shit.
 
Not you. 08/22/2010
 
Such a tug on the heart, and I'm yours at least for the moment. It's familiar. Did this ever exist before the movies? The scene where I'm being pushed away for my own good. The scene where I sadly part, and you cry because you know I'm better off.

If only someone were there loving me no matter what I did. And maybe if you were real, I could feel okay despite my mistakes. I torture you and myself with nothing more than a blind eye, and yet we both come back to eachother, flirting with the idea that you are a reality. 

Forgive me once again for leaving. You know I'll be back eventually, and yet we all try to exist in the now, trying to appreciate what is, not what could or should be. You try to argue that there is no should, but we still strive for better, for what is right.

And when someone is gone for good, through death or through life, they hold a better place in memory than anyone who is bound to return. It's a price that many have paid, and that I have paid many times. Too many times? Is there such thing? It's a risk to love and stay, rather than leave and and be loved. 

And as the distance between me and you grows, I imagine myself greater in your eyes. Mounting, until one day when beyond all expectations I return. I'm different now, almost unrecognizable, but I am so proud to see your growth. Now it's not about me. Now it's love undefinable. 

The world has tested us each in a unique way. And the beauty is that I can understand. And you can understand. It was never an end for me. It was never an end for you. Such a beautiful play death is. Such a sad and beautiful play.
 
How to progress. 07/31/2010
 
When it comes down to it, you won't have done enough to regret any decision, and no matter how insignificant your worry was, you will feel embarrassed that you had doubts. You will almost feel sad, but you'll be happy. This hump is over, the struggle to get here was nothing but something to be appreciated, but you are glad that it is over. Still, you can never go back, and you didn't know that the period was ending until now, so you mourn just for a bit. It's like graduation or first love ending. It's natural and good feeling, but it is sad to say goodbye. You will never be the same, so goobye. You will forget as time moves you further away, so goodbye. Your voice inside will change forever, so goodbye.

You stand on a ridge looking down into the valley. In clear view your previous self is there. You watch yourself struggle in the past. So sure, yet terrified, and unwise you were. What would you say to him? And what will you say to yourself later on, when you peer down to the present? How much do you wish to go back to change what was, and how much will you wish to come back to now?

They say that life will go by in a flash, and you know that up to now you have worked so hard to make it stand still. Yet it progressed, and so now you let your sail go, and flow with the direction of the tide. 

Goodbye Good and Bad. Goodbye Right and Wrong. The compass points, but you no longer need it, nor did you ever. Goodbye slow times yet painful, and goodbye epiphany. You worked so hard to hold it all in your field of vision, and all the while worked in vain to make more time to experience it's beauty.

Goodbye lingering and procrastination. Goodbye Hope. You will look back to now, looking back to before, and you will no longer wish to go there or here. Instead you will cherish memory for what it brings, and forgive what it misses. 

For now you look back to the past, and smile with appreciation at what you were. Let him be the way he was, and he will get here. Let him be, and let yourself as well.
 
How to have fun. 07/15/2010
 
Forgetting how to have fun is the same as forgetting just how volatile nearly every situation is. Reality seems steadfast, yet each experience can swing from favorable to unfavorable in the shortest moment. The instability of each situation, however can work to each person's advantage. 

Realize in each moment that there is a part of yourself that craves something that is not. That part of yourself is not to be ignored, nor is it to be indulged. You may want attention, or chocolate, or alcohol, or silence, or privacy, or relief, or to be more comfortable. This craving is real, but you cannot satisfy it permanently. You may find a solution, but the craving morphs into something new or something old. you can ignore it, but you'll find that the more that you do, the further you will distance yourself from really learning how to have fun. 

To understand how to have fun without relying on the circumstances of your situation, you need to understand that fun is a result of appreciation of what is, not what could be or will be. Pinpoint the craving. Try not to define it intellectually, but sensually. Where does the craving manifest in your body? In your heart, your stomach, elsewhere? 

Really allow yourself to feel it for what it is. This is no idea in your head, it's a feeling, so it can't be described by words. Don't even try to describe it with words or thoughts.

Accept whatever it is that you are feeling. Accept the frustration that comes from never being able to be satisfied. It is time to finally accept that no matter how hard you wish, or pray, or ask, or beg, or demand, or feel sorry for yourself, your craving will never be satisfied completely and permanently. 

Now accept your craving for what it is, which is not something to be ridded of but something to be cherished. Now try to remove the word craving from the feeling. Let it be undefined intellectually. 

Learning how to have fun is you acting in this moment without being held back by trying to change what is. The key is to act with, not against. Run to, not away from.
 
 
An effective method for personal growth is something that is easily forgotten: when I am short with someone, when I get angry, when I talk back or argue, or when I am just generally grumpy it is never anyone's fault. Not my own, but more importantly, it isn't the fault of anyone that I interact with. When I find myself attacking someone with blame (either directly, behind their back, or in my head), ninety percent of the time I have something to work out with myself.

Again, it's like a dream: if I find myself arguing with someone, what does that person represent about myself at this moment? I'm probably scared of something. Scared of taking responsibility, scared of leaving my comfort zone, scared of being rejected, etc. Either way, it's almost always safe to assume that the argument is continuing because of me. That's not to say that the other person doesn't contribute equally, two to tango and all that, but it does not help to focus on someone else when I myself am perpetuating something that I don't want to perpetuate.

An argument is a challenge. A game almost. Nothing is more satisfying to realize that the argument can be ended at any moment, and then to actually use my volition to stop perpetuating it by allowing myself to see the other person's side and to clearly see what is bothering me. Again, what is bothering me is almost never routed in the actions of the other person, but something about myself. This is a tricky moment, because it's very easy to speak a truth that is intended to blame the other person for the argument. 

I'm scared that you are going to be mean again.
I'm upset that you don't trust me.
I want you to have confidence in me.

These may be true, but they aren't the underlying truths behind the argument. These kind of truths are barriers to reality. They help us think that very little of what happens in life is a result of our actions and thoughts, and that we are victims of circumstance. 

The mind will always find a way to protect it's power. If I let it go wild, it will go to great lengths to convince me that I am rarely at fault, and that I am already doing my best. Once again it's like a dream: when you find out that you can fly, the mind will try to make you forget. Why? Not because it is evil, or trying to hinder you. It is only trying to do it's job: create a stable perception of reality in which you can experience the world without going nuts.

Back to the argument. Again, the mind will give me easy access to the truths that I can blame on the other person, but I have to dig deeper, and in doing so, not act on the desire to win the argument, but the will to make peace with the other person. This doesn't mean necessarily accepting blame, or effacing myself, but it means to search for that strand of hope that things don't have to be this way. The hope that it's all just a miscommunication. And when you find that strand, you pull: it's stronger than it looks. Drag your way through the blaming, the attacks from the other person, through the thoughts that you are the victim, through the guilt of having blamed the other person, and so on until you reach the core of the interaction. What will you find? Almost all of the time: this argument is silly.

Pain, as we know, is a beacon. That goes for emotional pain as well. When you perpetuate an argument, pay close attention to how it feels. I find that it actually hurts emotionally. Same when I'm feeling grumpy, or if I think badly of someone because of something they did or didn't do. When you find yourself attacking someone, whether you are attacking them in your head, talking about them behind their back, or blaming them to their face, don't forget what your mind is doing. When you are in pain, the safest thing for the mind to do is to point the finger at something besides itself. It is afraid of being vulnerable, and so it lashes out. When it can no longer convince you that it isn't someone else's fault, it turns on you, and can cause depression. 

The only solution that I have found to be effective is to allow myself to realize that the mind is a tool, and not more. When I feel something emotionally I can either act on that emotion or not, but it is always my choice. If I am in pain, I need to take some time to feel the pain, acknowledge it, and be accountable for whatever I've done because of it. I find that when I verbally go through this process sometimes other people do as well. Sometimes they don't, which give the mind a big opportunity to pull me back into the blame game, but I try to not act on the underlying fear that motivates that, but to feel the fear, acknowledge it as pain, and hold myself accountable for my each thought and action.

This "mantra" will only work for so long. After-all it is just a logical repetition. The truth is ever-changing, so no repetition of concepts or words will keep you close to it. The only thing that keeps you close to truth is your will to stay close. As I've said before, this is the problem with religion, philosophies, and self-help practices: they attempt to define something that is undefinable. They all "work" for some time, but eventually, you are worshiping an idea, or trying to achieve a definition, a concept, instead of flowing with truth and reality.
 
Everything said. 06/25/2010
 
When it seems that everything worth saying has already been said, you are on the same track as those who have astounded you with their wisdom. There is no end, no purpose. There is no final door that you aim to unlock, no epiphany to break you free from the prison of time, or the confines of finite reality. 

There is no secret that you have yet to uncover. Mysteries, puzzles, and games are short-lived, and are all diversions from the hard fact that there is no trophy that will sate your craving. 

Time doesn't entrap you, it pulls you. Your unfulfilled desires are not torture, but bliss. It is the satisfied desires that are most dangerous. They hold the secret of futility. But there is only danger if there is sanctuary. The idea of pleasure begets pain. The claim of righteousness begets evil.
 
 
It's about dying, and rebirth, but more specifically, the transition from one type of being to another, and the assurance that life is not actually ending. In my life, as many days as possible, I die. It is the finality of something. The conclusion of a project, or job. The last day of the season. Someone moves away, or I move away. I finish reading a book. The pleasant conversation is over. Dinner is ready, and when our hunger is sated, we clean the kitchen, and turn the light out for the night. 

Each moment holds the potential for bittersweet death and rebirth, but it is most tangible in more obvious times of transition, like graduations, and weddings. Along with the unknown can come dread or excitement depending on one's approach. Without much effort, dread seems to dominate one's thoughts, and so the reality that every moment is death and rebirth is something that one tries to forget. Instead of acknowledging reality, we try to isolate death to the moment that our bodies cease to live. We allow ourselves to accept that one day life will end, but giving in to dread, we try with whatever is at our disposal to push that day further away in time. 

The thrill of transition is something that we isolate to few occasions as well. The mind preserves itself through fear. The idea that stability is not guaranteed is the smoke and mirrors of fear. With logic, we can reinforce the fear. The future is unknown, so how can we be sure that everything will be okay?

It is a cliché to say that every moment holds great potential for bliss, and for the mind that statement is easily proven false. We only have to remember the last tragic incident that we witnessed or experienced. If there is anything worth proving, sadly it cannot be proven through logic. Neither can it be proven by any words nor thoughts, nor by example. The mind in fact will most likely always find a way to doubt anything that it cannot classify, categorize, understand, describe, or prove. 

Each year is a graduation to the next, as is each month, and day, and hour, and second. If you can recognize the death at each second, as well as the corresponding rebirth, then there is one last indescribable step into the moment. Life is an endless moment of crucial transition. It is always time to say goodbye, and to tread bravely toward the future. 

There is no happy moment that isn't bittersweet. I have no authority to say the same for every moment of suffering, but I can say that a moment of pure joy in a story or poem, or film, or painting, or any other form of expression always feels contrived. It is a lie to portray reality without pain, no matter how afraid we are of acknowledging the pain in every moment. 

It's the pain that allows the stale feeling of stubbornness to die. It's joy that fills the void with flexibility. Nothing is spontaneous without both death and rebirth in each moment. It is our lack of spontaneity that manifests our dependance on drugs like caffeine, alcohol, and nicotine, as well as the yearning for something that we don't have, which when we get, is much less meaningful to us. It's spontaneity that allows us to do what we want instead of wishing that we could do what we want. It's not being afraid, but accepting the tragic fact that for so long we have been afraid. It's embracing death right here and now, and in doing so embracing life as well.
 
 
Be careful when you say something about yourself. If you really start to pay attention to what you say about yourself, don't you think you'd find that it is mostly shameless self-promotion? Are you really okay with that? How much of your time is spent on convincing yourself that you're a good person? 

Think about the last time you complained about someone. Think about what you said about that person. Think about how it made you feel. 9 times out of 10 you were saying those things because you wanted approval. You wanted someone else to agree with you that it's okay to be the way you are, and not like that other person that you are complaining about. 

Fight that impulse. I don't care about the person that you are complaining about, and neither do you. You don't really care if they change. If they bug you so much, then you'll leave them. You'll ignore them. You'll not care that they are the way they are. 

It's like interpreting a dream. You are everyone in your dream. Now try to make sense of it. What are you telling yourself? What is it that you are disgusted by? What turns you on? What is terrifying to you?

If you find yourself rambling on to a friend about what's wrong in your life, realize for a second that your life is you. Those problems that you are describing are you. If you really start paying attention and acknowledge your flaws as they actually manifest, not as you've convinced yourself that they manifest, then maybe you have a chance of redeeming yourself.

Guess what? If you're here at the point at your life that you are and you haven't been living the life of a celebrity, then you never will. You will never be famous, or an icon, or someone that many people have ever heard of. Now that you didn't make it I can tell you how you could have made it: foresight.

Whether you like it or not, you've been holding yourself back this whole time, and you always will. It's too late to change anything. You're stuck in yourself, and you wouldn't let go even if someone lead you by the hand. You're stuck in words like "weird." You sit there and try to communicate to anyone who will listen that you are this type of person that you think that you want to be. If they believe you, maybe you yourself can believe.

And when you do convince someone, how does it feel? Doesn't it hurt to realize that that person is worthless to you now? Don't you pity them? But you still keep them in your back pocket. A reliable little yes man to pull out and pull the string to hear the automated voice.

You don't want to change. If you did, you wouldn't feel like shit like this. You wouldn't just pretend to be confident. You would stop punishing the part of yourself that makes mistakes. The part that is awkward. The part that you try so hard to hide and ignore and forget.

You even trick yourself into thinking that you don't ignore anything about yourself. You sold yourself on the idea of being self-aware. But you're not. How do I know? Because you are here, at this point of your life, and you've found a way to actually believe that you don't know what to do.
 
 
It is religion, it is morals, it is the thought that some person knows what is right and what is wrong. The devil is the act of calling something evil, and the act of calling something good. It is over-simplifying complex emotions, thoughts, situations, and relationships. The devil is what makes us afraid of looking bad, or of losing approval. The devil makes us fight for false security. The devil herds us together like sheep. It melts us all into one giant destructive force. It makes us think that just because we can't know the answers to some questions means that we cannot answer them without knowing. The devil is the brain, the ego, and all other ideas. It is the barrier between thoughts and reality. The devil is when means become the ends. the devil is me, and these words, and any words that contradict them. Jesus is the devil. So is any saint or angel. So is God. So is Satan. So is destruction. So is creation. It is love. It is hate. It is arrogance. It is you.
 
 
First you need to figure out who you are. The quest to find oneself is something that is easy to laugh at. It has been simplified and conceptualized to a point that to try to find yourself is somewhat of a ridiculous notion. We all know that it would be embarrassing to declare throughout the day that I am searching for myself. Actually, that very fact has at various times in my life frightened me from asking the question: Who am I?

What a frustrating question. Especially since no answer to my knowledge is correct. And since it is essential to know who I am for me to become that person, I get all the more frustrated.

The problem is I think that my mind cannot comprehend who I am because that "who" is undefinable. In fact, I don't think any person is definable. The mind wants so badly to separate things into groups and create categories of this and that. It wants to have a concrete idea of me and other people. Thus we have stereotypes and assumptions.

To be yourself is to question the tendencies of the mind. Don't forget that the mind, the body, the ego is a tool to interact with the world, and like any tool, it is only as effective as its user. A carpenter's hammer tends to hammer the nails in slanted, so he compensates with a different motion. He doesn't let the tool decide the result.

Just because your body has an impulse to do something doesn't mean that you have to act on that impulse. Someone says something that is offensive to me, but I'm afraid to confront the person, so I just smile and shrug. Someone runs a red light right as my light turns green. There is no danger, but I let my anger dictate my next move, and I lay on the horn.

In both of these cases, I am not acting in a way that I actually want to act, and therefore I am not being myself. In the first example, I am not voicing my opinion, and the person who offended me actually thinks that I agree with them. Even if I don't voice my opinion, there is no need to smile, or give any indication that I am okay with what there person said. In the second case I perpetuate the awful experience of driving in the city, where everyone seems to be waiting to snap at each other. What I would prefer to do is let it slide, and next time that the situation is reversed and I am thinking about running a red light, even if it seems safe, I think twice.

To be yourself, you need to really see the motive behind everything you do. That doesn't mean to sit there and intellectually analyze every little action, rather allow yourself to acknowledge what the motive of each action is. This will not make sense to someone who is trying to make sense out of it. The brain will not understand this concept completely in the sense that there is not strict definition of what I am talking about. The brain doesn't need to understand though. The truth of every situation cannot be fully grasped by the brain, but I believe that each person can experience the truth in every moment if they allow themselves to be honest with themselves.

The key aspect to being yourself is accountability. Be accountable for your every choice, which leads to your every action. Only choose to act on impulses that you want to act on, not impulses that perpetuate unnecessary pain. That includes choosing to not be upset with yourself when you do something that you don't want to do. For instance, smiling and shrugging when someone says something offensive or hurtful. I wasn't being myself when I reacted to the comment, and I can't change that. I can however learn from that experience that I need to work on being accountable in that specific situation, and next time that I encounter the situation, I will be better prepared to be myself.

I think the most important part of being yourself is to never define yourself. You may notice this theme throughout my writing, but it is something that I need to constantly remind myself. Self-definition creates separateness between me and every other person, when really, they are just like me: choosing how to interact with the world. At the same time I don't define myself as one of them, because they are completely unlike me, making different choices as to how to interact with the world. There is a quote from D.H. Lawrence, and I can't remember where I read it, but paraphrased it goes something like this: "All people are not equal, they are incomparable to each other." I try to choose not to act on the impulse to judge other people because I have no actual way to judge them. They are the only ones who know their own insides, and what their motivation is for choosing this or that. 

To be yourself is not a goal, it is a choice, or rather a series of choices. You are on a path that forks over and over again. Sometimes it is easier to take one way rather than the other, but the difficulty of the path is inconsequential. What truly matters is whether you are headed in the direction that you want to go.