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reflectoutloud

About me pages always make my mind go blank, which is ironic because there's really so much to say. I guess what stumps me is where do I start? Here are the basics: They named me Laura. They, meaning my parents, who were never married but mingled in 1988 in the country of Brazil, where little me was born. I grew up in New York City among a melting pot of cultures, smells, and hustle. I've learned to be a go-getter, thinker, intuitive, lover of life, peace maker, and coffee enthusiast - among other things. I like to write. I've been keeping a journal since my early teenage years. I created Reflect Out Loud to simply share whatever is on my mind in whatever style that comes up for me. I try to let whatever I put out here be free flowing. I simply want to share my thoughts out in the open. But to simplify this about me: I am a human, having a human experience. I have a story, just like you have a story. And some of that story you'll see here. Um... I guess that's pretty much all I have for now. Big love, Laura

Filing the Void

I lived with a sense that something was missing. Although my basic needs were met (food, shelter, clothes, enough money to survive and sit here to write this blog) there was still something inside me that was crying and saying “it’s not enough. Something is missing.”

In my love life, I often blamed my partner for the void.
“I am sad because you are watching more TV than paying attention to me.”
“If only you would do X, Y, Z, then I will feel loved.”

Then I began to realize something I never realized before.
I realized that I blamed the world for the void.

“I don’t have my dream job. That is why I am sad.”
“My partner isn’t this X, Y, Z, way. That is why I feel unloved.”
“My father abandoned me as a child. That is why I have attachment issues.”

I also realized something else.
I realized that I wanted the world to take responsibility for my happiness.
I wanted everyone to do for me so I wouldn’t have to do for myself.

I wanted my job to make me happy because I didn’t want to be happy myself.
I wanted my partner to love me unconditionally so I didn’t have to love myself unconditionally.
I wanted others to be there so I didn’t have to just be with myself.

Once I realized this, I was able to learn the meaning of “Love yourself.”
I realized that if I wanted to be loved, all I needed was to be love.
If I wanted happiness, all I needed was to be happy.
If I wanted company, all I need was to be with myself.

Embodying this new notion has enabled me to be less afraid.
Now, when my partner is watching TV instead of giving me attention, I don’t interpret his behavior as a statement of non-love.
Now, although I still do not have my dream job, I do not interpret that as a sad thing because I haven chosen to BE happy not because I have something or another, but because happiness lives in me. Happiness has become a living entity in me; its being lives in me. If sadness tries to invade my being, I can more easily channel happiness back to me.
When I think of being abandoned and that makes me afraid, I remember that I can still have me.
I can still talk to myself. I know you might think that the idea of talking to yourself is crazy, but it really isn’t. We talk to ourselves all the time. When you have to make a choice between two things and you sit there analyzing which would be best for yourself – who are you analyzing with? Yourself. So you are constantly in communication with your being. I have learned to be my own friend.
It’s such a cool experience. You literally just communicate with yourself and yourself teaches you so many things! Everything I am writing here, I discovered through talking to myself. I have told myself that I needed to improve and to fill the void inside, and my-self responded with a new way of being.

I told myself: “I am.”
“Hm. I am? I am what.”
“I just am. and whatever else I wanna be, I am that too.”
“Oh, wow. I never thought about it that way.”
“I know!! aren’t I cool?”
“Yes. you are if you say you are.”

So I choose to BE HAPPY.
I choose to BE LOVE.
I choose to be COMPANY.
I choose to be WHOLE.
I choose to be  ALL THAT I AM. AS I AM. IF I AM. WHEN I AM.

When I am sad, I no longer tell myself “don’t be sad.”
If I am sad, then f#ck it – I am sad. That’s what I choose to be. And I will be sad for as long as I feel like being sad.

But since being sad doesn’t feel so “good” for me, but being happy does…I choose to be happy more often than sad.

How are you today?
Remember, however you are, you are because you choose to be whatever you are right now.

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A Few Words on Conditioning

And so you’re born. Welcome.

You are given a name.
You are placed in the care of people.
These people also have names. They have beliefs, ideas, language, culture, tradition, a level of education, possessions, habits, behaviors and their interpretation of the world.
They teach you the world as it is known to them.
They will teach you how to use your mouth to refer to objects.

Say, “Mama.” 
-Mama
Say, “Dada.”
-Dada.
Say, “Cup”
-Cup.

Next thing you know you can use your biologically developed vocal chords to produce sounds to represent externally perceived objects.
As you age your concepts become more complex.
“My mama is in the market.”
“My dada is reading the newspaper.”
“The cup is on the table.”

You are taught the ideas of the people raising you.
“No! It’s not nice to use your hands to eat. Use the spoon.”
“You have to pray before eating your food, God is watching you.”

You begin to be shaped by the information given to you by those who raised you.

Then you go out into the world. You perceive new people. New places.
These new people have different ideas from those who have raised you.
“What do you mean you have to pray before you eat? There is no such thing as God!”
“Yes there is. My moma and dada told me there is so. I believe them. They wouldn’t lie to me.”

Now you have conflicting ideas.
You are exposed to more modes of thinking. You are exposed to new experiences which you never thought possible.

Everything you engage with at any time is molding you. Changing you. Making you.

Then you realize that you are more than your experiences.
“My mama told me that I am Tom. But is that really who I am?”

You might have a name that was given to you. But that’s just a sound. A sound in which we use to communicate among ourselves in order to reference points in space.
You are not your name.
You are not your beliefs.
You are not the voices in your head.
You are not a label.

You are life.
You are breath.
You are consciousness.

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Life is Now

I used to think that once I got my own place, found the right person, finished school and got the right job, life would start.

I set goals for myself and once I achieve them I quickly turn to myself and say “Ok! Now what?”
I finished school… Ok. Now what?
I found a partner whom I love… Ok. Now what?
I have a nice apartment… Ok. Now what?

There is always this sense of having to do more. Get more. Accomplish more.

Accomplishing my tasks gives me a sense of fulfillment, which is great, but this sense only lasts temporarily and soon enough I am asking myself “now what?” again.

Then I finally realized something profound. I realized that life is here. Life is now.

Life does not start when I accomplish something; It starts when I take my first breath and it will end when I take my last.

I have arrived. I am here and this moment is my life.

I don’t need anything else. I am complete.
In this moment I am whole. There is nothing that I can accomplish to make me more complete because everything that I am, I am when I just breath.

I realized that I am not my name. I am not my car. I am not my house. I am not my possessions. I am not my education. I am not my achievements.
All these things play their function in our world — but when I derive my sense of self from them, I will always feel at lack. I will always feel the need to accomplish more because anything external to me is subject to time and change.
When I rest in the knowledge that “I AM” and my being is sufficient, I no longer need to seek fulfillment in things or in titles because I already am fulfilled.

My life can express itself through different experiences, but it’s not the experiences that define my life. My life defines itself through its presence.

Sometimes I still get lost and captured by identifying myself with the external world and achieving in order to feel at ease and accomplished – but the more I practice just being present the more I realize I am whole now.

I am free now.
I am at peace now.
I am enough now.
Life will not start when I achieve a goal – life IS and will continue to BE here and now.

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Is There More to Life than This?

There is so much to learn and so much information in the outside world that even if I spent my whole life studying it all I would still be left with questions. Sometimes I wonder “what’s the point of all this?”
Is there something I am supposed to be learning or seeing by being here and now or is this all some big accident without any purpose at all?

My best friend tells me that what matters is right now and what we make of right now.

Well, right now I am at work.
At a boring job I have spent the last 8 years of my life devoting to. I much rather be at a beach instead. But I am not. I choose to be here.

Why do I choose to stay at a job that I am unhappy with rather than go live by the beach as I wish?
Well. 1) I don’t have the courage to and 2) I don’t have the money to.
How will I live if I just take my bags and go?
Not to mention all the bills that just won’t disappear!!!!
Excuses, excuses.
I am a wimp. That is the truth.
I am too afraid to take life on by the balls.

But in the midst of all of my choices and life experiences, deep down I get a feeling that somehow something beautiful will come out of all this.
Maybe right now I don’t exactly understand WHY I am sitting here at this boring ass job and WHY life has brought me to writing this — but somehow, I feel that one day I will.

Sometimes I feel something great is going to come. I don’t know what or when or how… I just feel I belong to something great and I am waiting to see what that is.

Is there more to life than this?
I can’t seem to answer “no.”
I believe the answer is YES! YES THERE IS!

But where?

Well, that’s a subject for another time.

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