Yeild

Let 'em go. Let them win. Let them have it. It's okay. Breathe. If your day is past or your time has not come yet, be at peace. Let them run and flow past. Regain your strength, know that all things grow and recede. Be at peace. It is a fool that strives to always be in the lead, a success unending, an unfailing driving force of your personal mission in life. Work towards whatever end you are intended to work toward, but know that you must yield at times as well as succeed. It is the nature of all things to come and go, and to strive against nature, is to live in disharmony. Sufficiency is a far greater goal then to endlessly conquer and dominate. The fact is, sometimes you will and sometimes you won't. To rest comfortably in this understanding is to be at peace and to truly enjoy life. Love teaches us this. Patience is rewarded and its rewards taste sweeter than those that are forced. When you are winning, win with grace and thankfulness. When you are losing, lose with grace and thankfulness and there shall be peace.

Religion and the new world drama

What a time to be alive. The crashing wave of information is causing a steeply increasing aversion to all things religious. We are getting exposed to so much more than any other generation and this is just the beginning. A new world view philosophy is inevitable. In our grandparents time, it was difficult to learn about what other people around the world were thinking about space and time, sex and drugs, God and life, taxes and economic structures. Most information about other cultures was fouled with stereotypes, misinterpretation, fear, hate, misunderstanding and lacked respect. In our grandparent's grandparent's time, it was all but impossible to know much of anything about life outside of their own fishbowl. In less than 100 years, self education has become a matter of satifying curiousity, the entire world's philosophy is at our fingertips with the ease of a click. It was not so long ago that knowledge used to be a land reserved for wealthy families and tainted with the stench of entitlement or twisted by the ambitious, self serving wims of obsessive thinkers or rigidly controlled by powerful governments and religious bodies. Now Joe Blow can read about becoming a Bodhisattva and check out real time satellite footage of the Mekong river while having an IM chat with a Danish stripper and enjoying a Hot Pocket (those should be on the list). There is an ingrained fear of this new reality driven by organized religion especially. Aren't we the lucky ones though? I mean, fear is not of God. We should be joyously learning all these things. I am simply finding that we're more alike than we realize. Everybody laughs and cries, suffering is no fun, sushi is awesome, love is the best, lies are the worst. Strick dogma is beyond passe', it's negative and destructive. Listen to this beautiful music, enjoy and be thankful for this day, be free, treat others as you would be treated, take care of this lovely planet, remember your soul, explore and discover, create something.

Lies are the worst

Dishonesty is beyond my reasoning. I really don't get it. There was a time when I would tell lies to get what I thought I needed out of life. I would cheat the system, I would stack the odds and all the time what I was really doing was setting up a big fall for myself. It's one of those sure things in life. Lies lead to a downfall. They catch up with you. The truth always comes to the surface...always. Feel free to test that theory. So maybe I do get it, why people lie, they just haven't learned the hard lesson of how you end up hurting yourself and others through allowing something less than true to surround you. It's not necessary I say. Living honestly lets me always have a clear conscience, even if sometimes I have to tell people things I would rather not. The truth is beautiful in that way, honesty outshines the bitterness of some cold truths. It's truly the nature in which you behave that defines us, not what you do but how you do it, not what you've done but how you did it, not where you go but why you're there and not where you've been but why you went. Motivation is the heart of all matters and the soul's intent is always being stamped on everything you touch whether you expose it or not. The hidden agendas eventually make themselves known, the lies tell on themselves and you must choose to be their champion or to face the truth from the get go. Maybe I'm just tired of wasting time. I'd rather be up front about everything then have to wait for the truth to come out. The nice thing about living this way is that it really makes you think about how all things will effect others since we will always be owning up to our actions. I have no trouble with making up lies anymore, but I do have a new problem. It's hard to understand why anyone lies. Don't lie, live in love and honesty. It will be okay. In fact, it will be better.

Emotional Armor

I was born wide open to this world. To the opinions and the weight of all these people's emotional baggage. Sharing the load. Years later I'm just now fighting to keep from building up a callous layer to protect myself. Should I convince myself to only carry the loads that seem wise to invest in? I don't think it's right to deny pure emotion. Even now as I write this I'm debating. What's the value of being brought down by mild disappointment? Are we supposed to learn how to brush off the trouble brought when others let us down? On the other hand, are we suppose to feel it right down to the marrow, to know it, to own it and move past it? It seems as though the latter is the righteous path but the first is the wise one. When righteousness conflicts wisdom, which path is to be chosen? Wisdom is the culmination of learning but it is limited to human understanding and personal experience...where wisdom can only go so far, righteousness is the sublime infinite. When we are born, we don't question suffering, we just suffer and survive. We are born perfect and then slowly learn to be wise throughout our lives. When we seem to be getting to the point where we know how to treat each other in our elderly years, our time on this Earth is gone. Love and forgiveness is both righteous and wise, and so that is the path I will choose. To suffer this wound and to forgive and forget it too.

Stop with the war already

Enough. Enough war and killing and hard lined bullshit attitudes and political objectives and patriotism-polished justification. Enough. Don't kill anyone. Stop. It needs to stop. Everyone needs to grow up. The look in our leaders' eyes is that of angry children who only know how to play punch for punch. Everyone needs a timeout in the corner to think about what they've done. All the weapons need to be destroyed. That is the answer. Who cares if it's not practical or pragmatic. Who cares if it's impossible. Love each other, forgive each other. That is the answer. Abandon hate, mistrust, fear, and lies. Stop the rise of violence. Bring peace. Taking one life is the same as taking the entire universe. Who gives anyone the right to do that? Why argue over something so simple. History teaches us that we only fight and fight, kill and kill, over and over. Why can't we be better than that? Who is teaching these values of death and fear? Love is the answer. I believe in love and will not abandon it. How long will it take for the world to know love for everyone? So many opinions to overcome, so many people who never mature, so far to go. I can only be an example. Let's all be examples.

This film is on a maddening loop...

Somebody said these lives come and go. You'll be here again. I believed the idea in principle but it seems you have to experience some things first hand before you really take them to heart. My cycle is big and it takes a long time for me to go around the sun. But I have. I'm talking about my mood, my outlook on life, my particular position in life. Each time around I seem to be getting better at recognizing mistakes and worse at letting myself fail. I just went through a very rough spell. Two years or so of watching my life dissolve away. It's happened before. It will again. This new life of mine is going to be different, better than ever, I'm sure. I am filled with thankfulness for yet another go-round.

I got a job

I got a job when I was 13 working for a tree farm in Idaho. Child labor laws be damned. I worked for two months that summer. 40 hours a week in the sun weeding seed beds and enduring racist Native American remarks from the inbred mountain idiots that I had for coworkers. My Dad would drive me and drop me off at 6 in the morning and I rode my bike the 3 or 4 miles home down the gravel canyon road at the end of the day. I sat in the dirt and drank Gatorade from my giant cooler jug. For lunch I ate the Frito's and PB&J sandwich that my Mom packed that morning. When I came home from my first day I collapsed on the living room floor and slept until I had to go back. The farm owners were indifferent to the needs of their employees, clearly possessing a much deeper fear of not paying their bills. The solution, overwork and micromanage their employees to be triple sure they are all working, all the time. And we did. I saw people being fired on the spot a number of times for simply not being able to keep up. We kids worked alongside migrant workers who were getting paid less than us to do even more work. They were happy enough to be employed despite the endless harshness bestowed upon them by both fellow workers and supervisors. A mental lashing for being born on the wrong latitude in the wrong time. It took one serious shower every day to get the layer of dirt off. The best part of the day was the end. I would ride down that canyon road as if I were flying, at the bottom of the long winding drop through the trees the road turned to pavement and I swear I was the God of speed and Lord of the wind. There are times I miss riding home like that. There are times I miss it all. By any standard it was a rough job, especially in our new age of hygienic cubical isolationism. Maybe I just miss being a kid, with loving parents and a good home, having a terrible job I knew I could quit at any time instead of having no choice but to find a good job that I can't leave. We're never really happy until we accept that life is pain.

I love you

What a wonderful thing to hear, better to say, better yet to be certain you mean. Love causing such boundless perfection. Even in the face of complete loss. You know love, when you know love. It's going to be okay. It forgives and forgets perfectly. Always renewing and freshly supplied. Never failing. I love you, I love you, I love you. And I mean it.

The nagging need to be alive...

Whatever it is, it's probably only going to last for a while. Your cold, your bad hair day, your dying mother's last will and testimony, the planet Earth (or are we calling it Urantia now?...whatever), the love of your Hermit Crab, your new shoes, this thought. And what is it to stand for something? For your family, for freedom, for the right to live the way you wish to, for a church, for the world, for a leader, or for a follower's belief. Everything under the sun passes away and is already dead and gone a million times over...or not. I'm right here typing these things here in the forever moment filled with beauty untold, with the chill of winter biting the tip of my nose, endless thoughts and some tasty chex mix...bold party mix, to be precise. So I say to you unfaithful, you fools in your madness all around, swine, foul, unworthy ones just like me, be alive and know this life is a precious gift, a chance to be. God loves you.