People with no face, drifting year to year
Led by money's anthem, the devils' Key is in fear.
The carrots hang so close, but I just cant get a nip.
It seems to be endless, this whip driven trip.
working so hard for wants and desires, my spirit is screaming.
to realize a dream is to realize I am dreaming,
nothing to want nothing to take.
Where the mind is in deep sleep, and the heart is fully awake

The suns light shines so brightly it is hard to look directly at it. Even though the moon Is just a big dark rock, the sun gives off so much radiance we  can see light reflecting off the moon making it gorgeous to my eyes.

As God shines so brightly, we can see Gods reflection in many things, but not until we are aware that we are the light can we look directly into ourself.

What if Your life where a dream. What if everything you see, hear about, all the people you met where just part of your own creation. What if the only reason you fell asleep was just becuase you wanted to know what it was like to wake up from such a intricate, subtle, and amazing dream, and to come to a realization that you had been sleeping all this time.

What if this post is a message from yourself trying to give you a signal to wake up.

I have Asked God to Challenge my life so that I may learn from it and it has been done.

I find myself currently in the downgrade of the ups and downs of life and I would be a liar if I said that it has been easy. When I say down grade I only mean that this part of my life has been unusually difficult for me to adjust to and in finding a balance in my life.

I am currently taking 16 credits/ 4 classes at Lansing community college (micro econ, math writing and accounting) I am working about 27/28 hours a week and I volunteer for the listening ear for four and sometimes eight hours over the weekend. I am also buying a house with my father (exciting!).

I look at my schedule and It perils to the things that other people have done in there life and have accomplished week in and week out with ease. I am not trying to minimize the schedule that I have to maintain but maybe that is was what I am doing.

In any case, I have asked God to challenge my life and since I have such high expectations of myself I feel I have let myself down as I have lost a balance in my life because of the amount of time and energy that school and work consumes.

With that said, I have a lot of faith that I will learn from this and find myself overcoming this difficulty in my life. If I didn’t believe in myself I would not have asked God to challenge me. I guess I am just surprised it is taking a while before I make my leap and starting hitting stride.

I will say this, this challenge has pushed me to change the way I think and has really magnified things that I want to work on as far as changing my thought habits. I am more aware more than ever that even the fact that I have written down that school and work consumes my energy sends a negative message to myself that I am over exerting myself. Thus, with this realization I am taking steps to restructure my thinking patterns so that I create motivating and energizing thoughts instead of draining and self defeating ones.

I have much to learn from life and one of those things is that getting stuff out of my system is very healthy for me and it gives me the ability to separate myself from current situations and take an outside perspective. It also takes away some bottled negativity and frees up energy for other things(< this would be an example of creating motivating and energizing thoughts). With that said I have a lot to do and I want to get that done so that afterwards I can do some planning so that I can find my balance.

Thank you God for answering my prayers because I will surely gain a lot out of this time and come out better for it.

Why do i live this life?

for me, for you, for God?

I would say all the above but it seems to me that the people that have made the most impact on this world have done so at great pesonal scarifice. for example, Jesus, MLK , Gandhi (the list goes on and on) . I realize that i look at these heroes through a filtered subjective, meaning that the world has portrayed people who have made great personal sacrifices as the end all be all prototypical hero (firemen, policemen, soldiers)

With that in mind it still seems like the greatest impact is to be made by sacrificing ones self for the greater good.

I wonder if that complete commitment to self sacrifice and faith in God is far more fulfilling when my eyes close for the final time in this body. 

My 1 real fear is that i am lying on my death bed at an old age and feel like i have not done enough with this life.(clowns are kinda scary too)


With much contemplation I realize that the complete sacrifice of my life is really a test of faith. 

Do I have complete and total faith? 

no, not yet. but I have faith that my faith will grow. lol

It is funny that I am willing to sacrifice for my entire life for you, for just a chance to do something of significance. It might be tough or it might be easy, in either case I have faith. I am not saying that I am going to stop sleeping or over exhuast myself and die (that wouldnt help out anybody). I mean that  with the basics for survival in place I am willing to make many personal sacrifices.
  
If this journey leads to great happiness or great struggle so be it.

with this in mind i have some planning and prioritizing to do.

I have done some contemplation and I realize that all my life I have been going through a consistent pattern of communalizing and individualizing.

· As a baby (communalizing dependency with my mother)
· As a toddler/ terrible twos (individualizing)
· As a child to pre teen (peer acceptance / communalizing)
· Rebellious teen years (individualizing and learning about my true Self)

- I am probably at the cusp of the above and so now I can only predict where this pattern will take me.

· Falling in love (communalizing)
· Breaking up (individualizing)

- I will probably repeat those steps until…

· Find my true love (communalizing)
· Want distance (individualizing)
· Propose (communalizing)
· Have cold feet (individualizing)
· Get married (communalizing)

And then those ebbs and flows of communalizing and individualizing may continue (and probably will).

This seems to be a very natural and quite effective part of life.

But wouldn’t it be more holistic and effective to simultaneously integrate Individualization and communalization into every thing that I do?

With that in mind I took a look at what I do on a regular basis and how it will affect others and myself when it is all said and done.

For example…

Reading
· I contribute to myself when I read. It helps me gain perspectives, knowledge, and confidence in that area. (Individualization)
·I contribute to others when I read (maybe not instantly). With any gained knowledge I can apply it to help others. (Communalization)


Volunteer work
· I contribute to others through volunteer work. I make an effort to reach out to the community in order to make a positive impact. (Communalization)
· I contribute to myself through volunteer work (maybe not instantly). When I volunteer I gain good spirit, work ethic, and compassion. (Individualization)


I  looked at alot of actions (“good” and “bad”) that seem to be Individual or communal,  but all seemed to contribute to both categories when it is all said and done.

I realize how holistic the patterns of life really are and how one thing contributes to the other.

That just seems so amazing to me!

 

In reading today I realized that while I'm reading instead of transcending this world into a stage of all being I have reattached myself to the stage of learning. What can I learn if I am what is/knows everything? Thus. If I can learn then I am not my true Self.

So why do I read/run/meditate?

Is it for me? Yes, because I feel that without my growth mentally, spiritually, and physically, I would not be who I'm today.

But also, do I do it for you? Yes, like many people I feel that my investments in myself will later contribute to the whole in the best way I know how with what knowledge and experience that I have attained

I guess I am preparing myself. I am preparing myself so that if I don't reach the stage of total Being then I will at least have accumulated as much as I can to contribute in the best way that will know how, even if it isn't perfect. I think of it like this, if I can't become the tool that can be used in any situation then I will try and accumulate some useful tools so that I can use them as (WATCH OUT. Very relative term directly ahead! lol) "effectively" as possible.

But some of those points above are very dualistic and presuppose that I cant do both...

In truth, there are times when I read/meditate/run that I truly feel one with all. So that leaves me with not what I am doing but how I am doing things. This brings me back to my internal struggle of not being my true Self in a permanent stage ("permanent stage" that's kind of redundant).

Anyways, I realize that all my disappointed and bothered feelings through out my life (including this one) have all been about one thing. But before I point out that one thing I want to go through some of my misinterpretations of that feeling.... My mom is a bitch, I need to be rich if my life is to mean anything, people are arrogant, people are ignorant, people are annoying, stupid, egotistic, judgmental (I am judging them by calling them judgmental lol) hypocritical etc.

Truly this feeling transposed in so many forms, is really just a projection of myself and how I am unsatisfied/bothered/frustrated/disappointed in not being one with everything, not being my true Self, and so this feeling when I boil it down, is the urge to become what I truly am.

I am not angry, upset, outraged, disappointed or annoyed with you...

All of those things have been a projection of how I feel about myself when I am not my true Being.

I am sorry to all the innocent bystanders that I have pained, I was not my Self.

 

I really don't believe that words can ever really give 100% of what a person is trying to convey. So I do believe words are limiting and somewhat frustrating but they also have a very useful role in communication.

With that in mind...

Like many, ever since I can remember I have always longed to live a life with the reality of enlightenment but today was a very strange day for me. I would say that I did as much as I hoped to accomplish in a day ( and I had no masturbators call me during my shift at the listining ear!)but by the end of today I felt bothered.  It was very clear to me in regards to what was bothering me but the particulars where not deciphered and it was very hard to put into words. With this troubling feeling at the pit of the soul I asked myself without words, "what is wrong" and the answer was a bit more than disconcerting but clear as rain. In not so many words I basically understand that may very spirit is not content in just being a best friend that I get in touch with throughout the day.

My true self said  "I must have permanence in this experience of your life" (This came from my soul as a dramatic and undeniable declaration of which I have never experienced before). So that is the "new" journey that I am embarking on (how exciting!). Right now I can only satisfy this transcendent longing in temporary states (which is not a small task in itself) but the heart wants what it wants and when I have listened to and followed my heart/soul/essence it has never steered me wrong.

All I have to do is just be my true self in a non-doing fashion (tao te ching props!) ...

Just being. (Sounds easy enough lol)

I will definitely do some yoga and meditating before I get to bed tonight!

Hi ho, hi ho, off to non-doing I go! 

I had a truly amazing day!

I spent time with people I loved  and met Travis, who is an amazing artist and spirit!

My mentor, his wife (my aunt), Travis and I where all enjoying one of those conversations that enlightens the mind and reaches for the soul. 

Thats what I am talkn bout!

Ya know!

http://brian.zaadz.com/blog/2005/12/zaadz_business_model_aka_how_we_re_gonna_make_money#comments

^ that discussion over the zaadz business model we amazing to read. It had so many things that I had thought about but could not even articulate, much less conceptualize. It meant allot to me that other people where thinking but not only thinking but taking action to a holistic and second tier business philosophy. I have heard allot of good things about the book " Good business" and I want to check out Competitive Business, Caring Business: An Integral Business Perspective for the 21st Century by Daryl S. Paulson and Ken Wilber, also, John MacKay and his "whole foods" project and maybe fred kofman's conscious business. If there are any suggestions for information on evolved, integral or holistic business that you could send me, I would love to look at it!