Meditation is based on the premise that no one else will ever understand you… so it's entirely up to you to gain that understanding of yourself… Out of understanding self comes the elimination of self consciousness… Deeper understanding creates energy that draws or deflects the people and events that shape our life…
A state of mind is a place… it could either be a prison or the doorway leading to the kingdom of heaven within you… What we hold on to often becomes our prison… I have seen more lives ravaged by holding on then I have letting go… I have seen the things that people hold transform into their chains… into their prison… Travel deep within… find that which you hold… find those chains… and the way they confine you… see the way they create anxiety, bitterness, judgment, blindness… Find your chains and you will find what prevents you from living in this present moment. Only you can free your soul… Let it go…
Destructive behavior is the result of not accepting yourself, trying to "be a somebody" or trying to fix something in life that is not broken… At the heart of this lesson is trying to be God because you fail to see you are in fact already divine… Look around you and see the people whose live's have been ravaged… this lesson surrounds us in the pain, sickness and suffering of others… If you go into the slums you will see people who insisted on holding on… people who were dragged and wounded until they could hold on no more… Once you realize you are already in fact a somebody… it becomes easier to let go of the dreams that haunt you… the illusions that make you miserable… the "success" that sickens you when you fail obtain it…
This is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… Our minds were opened to all the possibilities and we no longer felt good enough… Then came Nimrod, the tower of Babel and consumerism… A world that was once especially designed for us was transformed into a place designed by the pursuit of power and greed… an economy that depends upon creating discontentment in us… in a world where the number of people medicating for depression and anxiety is growing… where more people die from prescription drugs then illegal drugs… a world that desperately needs to wake up…
Life is boring for me in a good sort of way… I now accept myself… I don't need to be a hero or a victim anymore. Even the fact that someday I will die is less threatening… I swear humans are the only species needing to constantly have something going wrong or something to fix in order to be happy… Life is now a stream and my body is a raft my soul rides down the river… no more fighting… no more arguing with the current… in acceptance I have found freedom like never before…
Life is dynamic meaning spirituality looks different from the vantage point of each individual life. People think they can create a one size fits all spirituality, but that is actually religion not spirituality. The very fact that our lives are all different means we all take different paths… we are the path… our life is the narrow road. Do any two people see God the same? Do any two people see Christ the same? No matter what we "believe" it has been shaped by our own individual perception via life experience. The Christ I know today will transform into a completely different Christ as I grow spiritually, therefore each individual's perception is truly the road or the way… our lives are far too distinct to narrow it down to the so-called "one-way" mentality. Where does God or Christ truly exist… they live in our perception and our perception changes with time. Everything we know about God is in our perception therefore as our perception changes God changes. Anyone who tells you psychology is irrelevant to spirituality needs to realize our psychology is the lens with which we view God.
Unfortunately evangelism is just selling a religion like a household product. People talk about their religious product in ways that makes it the solution to all problems. People will even sell their particular church like a product. If I only had a dollar for every time a person said "MY CHURCH IS NOT LIKE OTHER CHURCHES". Too often the institutional church experience is like the various forms of medical marijuana that those clinics offer. One church makes you feel warm and fuzzy while another church scares you straight. All too often churches that people choose are more about finding a good fit for their personality then they are about truth. When the churches people attend have to fit their image… well… that says it all. Now we got people going to those fancy churches built like resorts with lot of amenities designed so we can impress our friends. Here is the truth sometimes a person's religion is the symptom of a deep psychological problem… I know it was for me anyway.
There are people in this world called sociopaths or pathological liars. A sociopath is a person who turns life into their own fantasy. Sociopaths recreate them self as a character in their own story and they freely construct elaborate lies to reinforce their story. Sociopaths are afraid of the truth so they shelter themselves inside a story. An extreme sociopath is a person who begins to believe their own story and they feel justified in lying to preserve the bases of their story. Today I am going to write about a form of sociopath behavior called institutionalism. Lets look deeper into the causes behind this sociopath behavior called institutionalism…
What happens when a Christian feels obligated to God? What happens when a wife feels obligated to her husband? What happens when a husband feels obligated to his wife? What happens when a child feels like a grade? What happens when an employee feels like a slave? What happens when life feels like a performance, when everything and everyone around you become the props? What does it mean when your passion is gone and you’ve lost touch with both your own humanity and the humanity of others? What does it mean when every day feels the same… that is if you can even still feel? What happens when a woman stays married only because she has no other place to go or no other way to provide for herself? What happens when a man stays married out of guilt, obligation or because the price of marriage is cheaper then the price of divorce? What happens when you go to a building called a church because you have to go and not because you want to go? What happens when life starts to get so cold that your longing for warmth becomes all consuming? What happens when your love for yourself begins to overcome your misery? What happens when your fear of losing everything is overcome by your fear of never finding true love? It has been said in order to win we must be willing to lose. In order to succeed we must be willing to fail. To find our life we must refuse to play it safe. Safe is not fun. Safe is not passionate. There is nothing romantic in playing life safe. Institutionalism is a form of sociopath behavior where playing it safe or feeling stuck leads to living a lie.
Now here is the truth… we all have felt stuck and will feel stuck many times through-out our lives. Life was never meant to be institutionalized and yet many have turned life itself into one big institution. We work because we have to, stay married because we have to and go to church because we have to. I personally believe that love and obligation are mortal enemies, but institutionalism attempts to merge love and obligation. What if life had no strings attached? What if freedom was just a decision? What if a husband and wife were held together by passion, not obligation? What if you could get a new job doing something you enjoyed, so that you didn’t feel like a slave? What if college isn’t for everyone and what if I told you that some of the wealthiest people in the world never graduated from college? If you are feeling stuck then why don’t you look your fears dead in the eyes or at least have the courage to open your eyes? It is surprisingly obvious when a person has lost their passion for you. It is obvious when your boss doesn’t see you the same anymore. It is obvious when you are failing at something or wasting your time? Time is precious, so why would you want a lie built upon obligation instead of a life built upon passion? Why would a person live a lie married to a person they don’t really love or stay married to a person who doesn’t really love them? Why would you want to waste your life in a dead end job or a job that makes you feel dead? Why would you want to keep banging your head against the wall over and over again? If you fail to reveal the truth on your terms eventually the truth will be revealed on its own terms. If you fail to use the truth to set yourself free you will live a lie not a life. We have two choices we can fall on the truth or the truth will fall down upon us. We will either empower ourselves with the truth or the truth will crush us. Why? because the truth is unstoppable.
To be enlightened is to become the truth. The truth flows like water. We must live like water and learn to flow. When water sits in the same place too long it becomes smelly, rotten and it stagnates. What if freedom was just a choice? What if you could be married to a person who truly loved you or be with a person that you truly loved? What if you could make money doing something you enjoyed and even without a college degree? I am realizing more then ever before in my own life that I am never stuck. Today I continue to make the decisions required to live in freedom. I have become an observer of truth. Observation leads to questioning and questioning leads to the truth and truth leads to freedom. I believe life is a journey to freedom that begins the day we are born. All of us have the freedom to make choices that lead to love. I am here today to tell you that you are never stuck. If each day you wake up next to a person you don’t love or next to a person who doesn’t love you, make a change because you both deserve better. You deserve better then to live in fear. You are not obligated to a sovereign God. You deserve better then a dead end job. Quit identifying with what you do. You are not a maid, a paycheck or a grade. You always have a choice and the second that you deny yourself a choice… that very second you have become institutionalized. Love is not a “have to”… love is a “want to”. Love and obligation are mortal enemies that when combined produce institutionalism. Institutionalism is a cold passionless existence, spent going through the motions. Institutionalism is living without being fully alive. If you want to play it safe in life then prepare for a cold, passionless life of obligation. If you want to be free then start questioning everything that is cold and passionless in your life. You deserve better. Time is precious, so why would you want a “lie” built upon obligation instead of a “life” built upon passion?
I love people and I hate fear. When I see people gripped by fear it breaks my heart. Here-in lies a problem because fear and false religious doctrines are often interlocked. How can one trying to eliminate fear not appear as a troublemaker when he challenges fear based doctrines? If our lives are founded upon love then love demands that we be troublemakers at times. I am not doing this for money or attention I am doing this for love. I don’t go to church and I am not selling anything. What I am trying to do is rid the world of fear and you can join me in this fight. If you think deeply it is not hard to realize that fear is behind every religion and every war we have ever fought making fear responsible for the deaths of millions of people. When a person commits suicide it is often because their fear of death is overcome by their fear of life. Nearly every psychological dysfunction is rooted in fear. The more I have meditated upon fear the more determined I become to rid the world of fear. Why don’t you join me on this mission… the first step is restoring your own childlike faith and ridding your own life of fear. Once you rid your own life of fear it immediately begins to benefit your spouse and it will literally transform the future of your children. After you see how eliminating fear helps your family you will soon begin to see how it helps other things like your relationships and your career. The elimination of fear makes it easier to both love and receive love and so you as a person will become more lovable. All this starts when you begin to love yourself so much that you no longer tolerate fear in your life. Maybe it starts when someone loves you enough to send you a note just like this note. OK, so let the battle begin. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. If you are reading this it is because I love you…
