lazyyogi:

When people ask for advice about the spiritual path, or anything really, I almost always mention mindfulness. A better word for it that Eckhart Tolle uses is Presence.

When you are mindful, you are aware of your mind. You aren’t using your mind but you are watching your mind. If you watch your mind, letting it go to and fro, you will see things as they happen. This changes everything.

If you can be present and watch as a negative emotion enters into you, it becomes infinitely easier to let that emotion go. Why? Because you saw it come from somewhere else. So you KNOW it isn’t you. 

However, when you’re in the thick of life, going going going, and something happens and you react with a rage that feels just, then you confuse yourself for your anger. You take on the identity of that negative emotion. You falsely believe that it has its root in you. 

It doesn’t. 

That is the beauty of mindfulness. Neo in the Matrix can only dodge bullets because he can SEE them as they are coming! He doesn’t wait until a bullet has hit him before trying to twist out of the way. This is like mindfulness…sort of. 

The same applies to thoughts. When you are so intensely present, like a samurai attending to the movements of his opponent’s blade, then you will see thoughts come and go. You can see them as they arrive. Because of that, you KNOW they don’t come from you. It makes them easier to watch depart. 

The problem with most people is that when thoughts and feelings come, they start toying with them. Either out of boredom or out of ego. They think about their thoughts, coming up with more thoughts and feelings about those thoughts. Same with feelings, more thoughts and feelings. All the while this process keeps the individual blind to the peace of the self. 

Peace isn’t an emotion. It’s the feeling of existence, unhindered. 

When you meditate, you fall through the skin of thoughts and emotions. You become the space in which thoughts and emotions occur. 

Mindfulness continues this experience in daily life. It maintains your meditation practice and sanity. 

And like Neo, when you’re ready, you wont even have to dodge the bullets. :P

Take that to the bank, my friends!

Namaste. 

The biggest issue is that I realize I am throwing myself headlong into almost worthless endeavors in the hopes that I something I do will amount to some kind of greatness that might please me. I am running and fighting from upsetting things in the hopes that I will overcome all upsetting things.

I have no direction, no path. I could pick up and disappear tomorrow. This is how I feel and this is how I feel constantly. I bury myself in obligations so that I don’t disappear on someone without saying goodbye or without a good reason because I would be hurt if someone did that to me. 

My direction is my empathy, I guess. Which is so ever-changing that I don’t know what to expect next. 

i want to see you illustrate that incident with the bear and the pitbull

Also… I hate you. 

But I will do this. And post it. ….Poor followers. 

i would say that the majority of your followers could hearken to this call, jack

I think so as yell and yet they do not, my dear twinkie. You are the only of my followers to come to the call of the antlered bunny. 

How many of you are ‘other’? As in ‘not normal’? 

This could be anything from a mental illness to a spiritual practice. Or whatever color gradient thing in between, I’m just curious as to who is following me and oddities interest me so… What’s up with you?

I will indeed do laundry. 

In other news. I have about 64 followers. Hello! How are you? What do you think about artwork and would you like to see any? I will take suggestions. I would take suggestions on stories to write as well, I don’t mind creating. 

Suggestions?

So I feel unwell. That sort of poor-mental-health unwell. I want to walk outside barefooted and just keep walking with the wind pulling at my clothes and my hair. 

That’s all I want to do. Yet, I have trained myself to do ‘proper’ things against this unwellness…. Things I don’t wish to do. Such as laundry, cleaning my room, doing dishes or homework. These are not things I am pleased to do but things I must do if I am to be able to be pleased. 

Like I said, I’d rather stroll through a field of wheat barefooted. 

nevver:

“Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle