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Becoming The Change

Be the change you wish to see in the world” – Gandhi

I sometimes get caught up in trying to change the world and forget that the change needs to happen in me. Sometimes I worry too much thinking I must teach kindness and teach love and teach peace, all the while forgetting that I must first BE kind, BE loving and BE at peace (or whatever else I wish to see) and then the rest will follow.

The Bible has a nice quote that says: “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.” (Titus 1:15). You can interpret this is many ways. The way I like to interpret it is: If my intentions are pure and if my perceptions and actions stem from a place of innocence, then all that I see/perceive/intake/experience/observe/feel/etc, will consequently be pure because the lens through which I observe and engage with the world is not a lens of malice but a lens of innocence. I must be like a child – despite having developed the physical form of an adult and having undergone numerous life experiences, I must continue carrying an innocent heart, becoming a living testament of purity despite my moments of flaws. As long as I am human I am subject to failure — and that’s ok because infallibility is not a property of humanity. It is not my perfect acts that will make me pure at heart (because I can do everything right in action yet in my heart I may hide my intention of doing right for mere approval or for the desire of praise or for whatever other motive) — a pure heart is pure because in it abides no malicious intentions — but should such intentions creep in (and believe me, they do all the time), our good and faithful friend, the mind, can help the heart be guided back to its pure, innocent state.

It’s only natural for the heart to be presented with what exists – all the possibilities for good and all the possibilities for bad. It is then up to me, a conscious and aware being, to ultimately decide what I will harbor within me.

AS OF THIS MOMENT, I AM NO SO CALLED “SAINT” LIVING IN SO CALLED “HEAVEN.” I AM A SO CALLED “HUMAN” LIVING ON SO CALLED “EARTH.” 

Sometimes I can be judgmental as hell.
I say or think things like:
“People are rude and need to change.”
“Some people are so disrespectful, boy, I tell ya! I just want to smack some sense into them!”
“Look at these freaking hypocrites, man, no morals.”
“Ugh, I can’t stand these damn politicians, so crooked.”

I even judge myself at times.
“I am so irresponsible! I am constantly late to work.”
“I can never do anything right.”
“I am so out of shape. I have to be more disciplined.”
“I am so dumb. I will never get anywhere in this life.”

All these thoughts, all these mean, condemning words I have allowed to abide in me have become basis for my perception. I have allowed my mind to be receptive to and my heart to feel that these negative words and thoughts I profess are real and true. I have allowed my inner space to be infiltrated by negative conclusions. (I am using the word “negative” here for lack of a better word… I can’t think of a more appropriate word right now to refer to the “yuckiness” I have allowed to abide in the space of my being).

I must be the change. If the change does not happen within me, even if everyone else in the world has already changed, I will not see it or realize it because the filter of my perception is set to the channel of malice and not the channel of innocence. The moment that I change my perception, inevitably my world will change. But it can’t be a half-assed change – it has to be fully real.
I can fool my spectators and become like an actor in the theater who plays the role of a hero, but I cannot deceive myself in thinking I am truly the hero I know I am pretending to be.
I must truly embody that which I wish be.

If I want peace – I must be in tune with peace.
If I want patience – I must be in tune with patience.
If I want kindness – I must be in tune with kindness.
If I want understanding – I must be in tune with understanding.
If I want innocence, I must be in tune with innocence.

How could I experience peace if I am in tune with war?
How could I experience understanding if I am in tune with ignorance?

I must channel my experience.

I must be that which I wish to see.

Once I am that which I wish to see, it will not matter if someone says to me: “Psst. Hey. Look. See that rude, greedy, lustful, prideful, cheating, lying, phony, unworthy person? Look how terrible he or she is!”  Because the moment I am what I wish to see, when I look out at the world I will not see rude, greedy, lustful, prideful, cheating, lying, phony, unworthy, terrible people. Instead, I will see kindness, sharing, sincerity, humility, honesty, truth, reality, worthiness, wonderful, people. Additionally, I will see love. I will see friendship. I will see compassion. I will see forgiveness. I will see understanding. I will see beauty. I will see life. I will see perfection.
I could then respond saying. “Hm. I hear what you are saying. I do not deny the existence of your claims but I do not see it as you see it because in the space of my being I have made the conscious choice to abide in perception of the good, the beautiful, and the blameless, because that is how I wish my world be.”

I am not denying the existence of the bad, the ugly and the guilty.
Let what IS – BE.

I accept all that IS, and as a conscious, aware being, I choose to embrace, be, perceive and act through that which is good.  May in goodness I abide and be.
_____________________________________________________________

BUT TO RAP UP THIS DISCUSSION FOR NOW….

I am not saying “Let’s be passive about everything and ignore and PRETEND there ISN’T any bad out there.” What I am saying is: If you are conscious and aware, choose the good and cast away the bad. If harboring condemning ideas in your mind such as “people are rude” make you see the world as a bad place, consciously make the effort to harbor loving-kind ideas such as “if there is such a thing as rude people, let ME BE KIND, that there be one less rude person in the world.”

I will embrace and cultivate tools such as patience, perseverance, kindness, forgiveness, understanding or any other helpful tool that will enable me to be the change. Will I succeed 100% of the time? Hmm…Given my human circumstances probably not. So if and when I do not succeed, I must be 100% merciful with myself during my moments of shortcomings, acknowledging that I have limitations but not allowing my limitations to stop me from persevering.

There’s a line in the 1997 Disney movie, Flash, where a boy fights to be able to keep and care for a horse he falls in love with and when told “you’ll never make it” the boy responds saying, “Then I won’t make it. But it won’t be because I gave up.”

I may never be perfect, “but it won’t be because I gave up.” I must undoubtedly believe in myself as well as believe in my dreams, utilizing my belief as fuel for transforming my dream into reality by actually living that which I wish would be.

I cannot completely change my world through force or through demand. There’s billions of us out there and it’d be humanly impossible (or perhaps tremendously unlikely and would require an unfathomable amount of effort) for me to externally transform the world to fit the very real and possible utopia that for now exists only as an imagination in me.

I cannot make or demand a person be kind.
I cannot make or demand a person be respectful.
I cannot make or demand a person be loving.
I cannot make or demand a person be in peace.
I cannot make or demand a person be good.

I can only make these things be true for myself and in making it true for myself I can hopefully inspire you to do the same for yourself.

If together, we call forth the good, I promise, our world will be good because all the conscious and aware beings abiding in it have willingly chosen to make it so.

To end this post…

To end this post, I just have to say this about all of the above I just said:

1. All this is just a bunch of words, and words are only symbols. So don’t take everything I said here TOO literal.

2. In the end all that matters is that: YOU ARE THAT WHICH YOU ARE, and not I, not anyone, or anything, could ever define you because only your very essence defines you, and your essence does not depend, and does not require any words.

❤

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1 of Many Rants: Subject: The Holy Bible

If you are religious and are reading this – I’d like to apologize in advance should anything I say here be offensive or hurtful to you. My intention is not to undermine or discredit your beliefs or faith but simply to discuss openly with you. (Smile).

If you think the Bible is the word of God – that’s cool. But it’s incomplete.

Here is why it’s incomplete: It does not have answers to everything – if you think it does – you’re only seeing part of the truth and to see part of the truth isn’t seeing the truth at all.

If you’re reading this, you likely have access to a computer and internet. How did the computer come to be?

The Bible does not teach how to build a computer.
The Bible does not teach us about Wi-fi.
The Bible does not teach us about the complexities of the internet.
The Bible does not teach us about cars.
The Bible does not teach us how to make engines.
The Bible does not teach us why water boils.
The Bible does not teach us how to create a vaccine for chicken pox.
The Bible does not teach us how to run a business.
The Bible does not teach us how to make a cell phone or how to use one.
The Bible does not teach us about chemotherapy.
The Bible does not teach us what is AIDS, Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, and all the other stuff out there.

I could go on forever about what the Bible doesn’t teach.
But other books do.
Engineering books will teach us how to build machines and how they work. YAY!
Science books will teach us about water, what it consists of and its boiling point (among other things) YAY!
Books on mechanical work will teach us about cars. YAY!
Medical books will teach us about vaccines, chemotherapy, Aids, Gonorrhea and other diseases. YAY!
So if other books explain more than what the Bible explains, why discard them and the knowledge they contain simply because their title isn’t “The Holy Bible?”

We can’t use the Bible as an explanation for everything because it doesn’t explain everything. PLUS!!!!! God’s word (if there is such a thing) would be SO HUGE there wouldn’t be a book big enough to contain it.
God’s true word would be something like: Everything ever uttered and put into its correct context in time and then compiled into a database capable of storing infinite data for all to access!
In other words: God’s word is all the knowledge and existence of all there is — and even THIS isn’t enough to describe it.

We are so much more than what a book can describe.
Our being is so much more than words could express.
We are not limited to a book, even if that book is regarded as holy by people. Just because people accept something as holy does not make it intrinsically holy.
Take water, for instance, if I were to take water apart by separating the hydrogens and oxygen I wouldn’t find the property of “holy” in it simply because a pope has blessed it. But if you would like to regard it as holy – awesome! Do so :). If it works for you, it works for you. But don’t expect a strict scientist to do the same. He doesn’t have to – because interpretations of a thing doesn’t matter either way. Just because a scientist deems something unholy based on his observations also doesn’t make it unholy – because if it’s holy to you – it’s holy. But at the end of the day, whether you think it’s holy or unholy doesn’t matter – because everything just IS. Whatever else you make or call the IS – is totally up to you. We must respect each other’s experiences and points of view in this life.

No concept or idea is sufficient to describe the ALL-NESS that life really is.

YOU ARE NOT LIMITED TO WORDS IN A BOOK.
WORDS IN A BOOK ARE NOT SUFFICIENT TO BE THE FULL TRUTH.
THE MOMENT YOU UTTER A WORD YOU LOSE THE ESSENCE OF WHAT IS BY DEFINING IT.
WHEN YOU DEFINE SOMETHING YOU CONTAIN IT. YOU LIMIT IT TO THE DEFINITION.

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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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