M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 70

What is Family?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

Family is not always that which you are born into.

Family can be the chosen people whom you love. These are the people for whom you would move mountains, who you know have your back, and who you confide in because they get you.

There is tremendous positivity in recognizing, acknowledging, and being a part of that family.

I am not disregarding the families we are born into. For the most part, they tend to be around from the beginning through the formative years and into the present. Parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins and the rest can mean a lot to you.

However, in many cases, we grow apart from the family we are born into. Some people simply take paths and choose lifestyle options that the rest of their given family might not understand. Places to live, hobbies, friends we keep can be wildly different from our birth families.

Some people form communities among these people, and when those communities become particularly close, they turn into families. Non-traditional, to be sure, but family none-the-less. These people matter to us, and we want to be there for them and help them to grow, and they tend to do the same for us.

Acknowledging and celebrating your chosen family doesn’t lessen love for your birth family. In especial because love is the ultimate expression of abundance. You have love, and showing it for ANYONE whom you care about will build immense positivity.

Aspects of the world today get really dark. Seeking things we love and showing our appreciation for them can help bring spots of light into that darkness. Corny as that may seem, that makes it no less important and true.

Family is about being comfortable

For a lot of people, there is a certain discomfort in time with your birth family. This is not a specific negative thing, it’s mostly a matter of how you have grown apart from these people, taken alternate paths in life, and differences in viewpoints. Whether this is subtle or extreme, it can make given family gatherings uncomfortable.

Once again, this does not mean that you do not love them. It just means that they are not the source of comfort for you that most associate with the idea of family.

However, the chosen family you surround yourself with can be just that.

This is why they are the family you choose. Because of shared ideals, activities, interests, and other matters, you become more comfortable with one another. These families ban be of any size, shape, or make-up, ranging from a wide circle of friends to a close circle of lovers and combinations therein.

The important thing is recognizing that family is not just blood. Family is an evolutionary step from community, and it can be the people whom you feel most comfortable and connected with. Love is a broad, wide-open emotion, and the ultimate expression of abundance and positivity.

There is more than enough love to go around, so creating and enjoying a chosen family isn’t crazy, and doesn’t lessen relations with given family. When you are mindful of the thoughts and feelings that go into this, you can see how deeply powerful and empowering it can be.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action

Knowing that family can be both given and chosen, you can recognize and acknowledge the power of the comfort and joy both forms of family brings you.  When we open ourselves to the infinite abundance of love which family represents, and experience all the good this can draw to family given or chosen, we ultimately empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we become more aware and mindful, and tend to spread that feeling to others around us. As such, we can build more positive feelings.

We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we eradicate negative feelings, we open up space to let in more positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.

Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  An attitude of gratitude is a positive attitude that begets even more good energies, and that is always worthwhile.

This is the two-hundred and seventy-second entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

After more than 7 years of weekly blogging, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive a free eBook.

Name *FirstLastEmail *NameSubmit

The post What is Family? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What is Intention?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

What is Intention?

Intention is focus. It is the focus on the action that creates reality.

Mindfulness is about knowing your own thoughts and feelings. With knowledge of your thoughts and feelings, you can take actions to consciously create reality. But the actions need focus, direction, or specifically intention.

So what is intent?  Dictionary.com defines it thus:

Intent (noun)

something that is intended; purpose; design; intention
the act or fact of intending, as to do something
meaning or significance.

When it comes to intent of action, meaning and significance are important. This is because action for the sake of action is not necessarily a creator. Whereas action with purpose, an act of doing something, and meaning, has far more power.

This is why intentional action is a necessary part of using consciousness to create reality. Being aware of what  you’re thinking and what and how you’re feeling opens the door to action. Action with intent behind it will better manifest whatever you are working on.

This is what intention is all about. Using mindfulness to live an intentional life. Rather than just going through the motion day in and day out, you actively work on experiencing and living a fuller life.

A lot of people see the world we live in today as having room for improvement. But in order to do anything to change the world, change has to begin with the self.

Intention for change

As I have written previously, the only things over which we can exert any control in this life are our thoughts, feelings, and actions. This is because these are the only things which are wholly, entirely, and totally ours. You can have influence on other people, but you cannot control them.

It is also important here to note that this is not a complete control. This, too, is influence, albeit direct influence. The difference is recognizing that if there is not intent or desire, no amount of control will impact change.

Intention for change is required. To make a change, you have to desire that change. As such, when you take action to implement change, it requires intention. No change will occur unless you actually want it to, and focus accordingly.

This can be applied to change of any size or shape. You can’t just pay the idea lip service, give it thought, maybe feel it out, but then take no actions.

I have read or listened to a lot of different books about the Law of Attraction and Conscious Reality Creation. The mistake a lot of people make is that they simply believe that you can think and feel, and then the Universe will just make it happen. Trouble is, while thought and feeling are the driving force, there still needs to be action. Specifically, intentional action.

While the world is constantly changing, the only way to influence or direct change in a manner you desire is to use intention. This is both very simple, and can be super complicated. This is because often distractions, obstacles, and other factors can get in the way.

Intent, however, can get you through.

You can direct change with intent

Examples of change you can totally take control of:

Let’s say you desire to move to a new place, far from where you have lived. You can’t just think about the move, and feel the move. You need to intend it. There will need to be research into neighborhoods and homes, moving companies, and other factors in order to make this happen. Taking intentional actions is the only way it will happen.

Another example is quitting smoking. This in particular is all about intent. Everyone I know who has successfully quit did so cold turkey. From my observations on the outside of such, it appears that when the person who quit decided to do so, it was their intent to be done smoking.

Rather than vape or use patches or nicotine gum or other such supposed step-downs, they made a choice. It was their intent to quit, they decided to do it, and intentional action of stopping all smoking related activities ended their identity as a smoker.

This is all about intention. You cannot just ponder quitting or half-ass quitting, you have to decide to do it. Intentional action is tossing out the cigarettes and ceasing smoking. Or no longer eating carbs. Or not chewing on your fingernails. Actions being taken.

There are going to be days where this is complicated. In especial when you are killing off an old habit or making some other drastic change. This is why intent, putting significance and purpose into your action, matters. Without that energy, it won’t fly.

Actions speak louder than words

We need thoughts to create ideas. From there, we need feelings to fuel and impassion our ideas. In order to turn them into realities, we need to take intentional actions to get them going. Intentional action is an absolutely necessary step to the physical creation of a given reality.

You are empowered to change the illusion of the reality in which you live. It doesn’t always feel that way, but it is still the truth. When you recognize this and work with being mindful of your thoughts and feelings, intent in your actions will, with practice, come with greater ease.

This can be challenging, but when you apply intent to your actions, you can direct and influence the constant stream of change in which you personally exist. Be aware of your thoughts, work on feeling out how the reality you desire to create will feel, and act with passion and intent on making it so.

It’s your reality. As you get more aware of this fact, you gain more influence over what that can mean. Being mindful of this is your first step into a larger world.

How will you use intention to consciously create a better reality for yourself?

This is the three-hundred eighty-first entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, walking along the path of life to consciously create reality.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way, and empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.

After more than 7 years of Pathwalking, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive your free eBook.  Thank you!

Name *FirstLastEmail *CommentSubmit

The post What is Intention? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Is Thinking Overrated?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

Thinking is not overrated

What a lot of people tend to neglect is that thought is the beginning of anything and everything.  Thinking drives the Universe, gives us new and exciting creations, and changes the world in wondrous ways.

At least, it should.  All-too-often, though, thinking gets poo-pooed.  There is currently such a backlash against intellectualism that logic and reason are taking a constant backseat to zealotry and speculation.  Social media is riddled with opinions with little to no basis in fact, and people choose to not think for themselves.

Yes, it can feel hard to think.  There are always a lot of different choices, and what happens if you choose wrong?  But not thinking, and just going with the flow, is how we end up living in a fascist dictatorship – or seeing laws pass that restrict things the government shouldn’t touch at all.

Thinking lets you see this for what it is.  When you think about what is happening in the world around you, you can see for yourself what’s going on.  When you become aware of this, you can do something about it.

Yes, it can be totally intimidating to look at all the things going on in the world today.  It can be depressing and overwhelming, too.  But you do have options to help you to change it for the better.

When you become mindful of what you are thinking, you can change the world.

Mindfulness of thinking exercises the brain

Like any muscle in the human body, the brain needs exercise to be strengthened.  It is not just a matter of games of skill like chess or Sudoku or one of those neuroplasticity tests – it can be far simpler.  Becoming more aware of your thoughts is akin to doing weightlifting for the brain.

Due to the nature of our society, people go through a lot of their day on autopilot.  They get into the pattern of their daily routine, they do the things that are “expected” of them, and float along that stream.  As such, things are able to bore into your subconscious, and plant seeds that take root as thoughts, and divert your intention.

Thinking is mindfulness.  It is a matter of actively becoming aware of your thoughts, and examining what is, in fact, going on inside your head.  When you become mindful of your thinking, you may be surprised to learn what sort of things are taking root in there that you would not consciously give attention to.

Consciousness creates reality

If, however, you are NOT conscious of your thoughts, then your subconscious actually creates your reality.  Before you know it, you are in a place that you don’t desire to be, and frustration and anxiety and other negative notions take root.

Being mindful of your thoughts and recognizing just what you are thinking about allows you to influence your own life.  Thoughts being one of the three things over which you can exert any control (along with feelings and actions), it’s important to be mindful of what you are thinking.

If you do not like what you are thinking, you can change it.  Straight to the point, you can change your thoughts.  Too negative?  Find positives to think about.  Too dark?  Find light.  Too depressing?  Seek out things that make you feel good.

Thinking is not overrated, because it is where it all begins.  You are empowered to change it to better your life.  You are able to be mindful and aware of your thinking, and use it to your advantage.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action

Knowing that thinking in not overrated, and is the basis of creating anything and everything in your life, you can use this to make change.  When we are mindful of our thoughts, we can shift them to things we desire over things we don’t want – which lets us ultimately empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we become more aware and mindful, and tend to spread that feeling to others around us. As such, we can build more positive feelings.

We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we eradicate negative feelings, we open up space to let in more positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.

Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  An attitude of gratitude is a positive attitude that begets even more good energies, and that is always worthwhile.

This is the two-hundred and seventy-first entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

After more than 7 years of weekly blogging, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive a free eBook.

Name *FirstLastEmail *MessageSubmit

The post Is Thinking Overrated? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

What Path Are You On?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

Are you living life with direction?

Everything in life is choices.  We are constantly looking at decisions we can make, and options when it comes to our choices.  Each of us can decide to be aware, or choose instead to make no choices at all.

For a long time, I wandered rather aimlessly through my life.  I went where the wind blew, changed jobs and relationships frequently, and crowned myself to be King of Indecision.

To be honest, this is not a desirable title.

In time, I recognized that I desired more from my life.  I had a desire to live a purposeful, directed life.  So I started to really ask myself what I desired to have, and to analyze the choices I was and was not making, and also my decision process.

On many occasions, I would find myself at a crossroads.  I was between ideas, between jobs or relationships or homes, and facing choices.  More than once, I decided not to decide.  That, as you might imagine, didn’t go so well for me getting to anywhere I truly desired to be.

More than once, when I reached that crossroads, I let life carry me along, and let life live me – rather than choosing to live life on my own terms.

There are always options when it comes to how to live.  Three in particular:

Let life live you
Curl up in a ball and await death
Live life on your terms

It can seem really easy to just let life live you, and go with the flow.  I think for the majority, this is what they do.  Some will be perpetual victims, and metaphorically await death.

Choosing a path is making the decision to live life on your own terms.

Discovering the path

Recognizing what path you are on is how you live life on your terms.

Because it is all-too-easy to get distracted, and to let outside influences and circumstances drive us day to day, even seeing a path to be on can be challenging.  Why? Several reasons come to mind.

First – the state the world.  I know that the world is always a pretty chaotic place, but at the moment it’s even more so.  What’s worse, far too many of our so-called leaders, rather than be good examples, are bad examples.  The unadulterated greed, unsympathetic actions, and pandering to the money with pretty much zero accountability is disheartening.

As such, taking an action for the self may feel selfish.  It’s not, but it can feel that way, especially in the current atmosphere.

Second – societal expectations.  There are certain cultural norms we tend to find expected of us.  Often, choosing your own path goes against this.  Care to feel isolated and alone?  That is what we tend to fear about choosing a unique path.

Third – fear.  We live in a fear-based society where our frequently lousy leaders use lack and scarcity to drive fear in order to sustain their supposed control.  For example – Brexit.  From the outside, it appears that fear of foreigners and a loss of sovereignty drove a pretty backwards decision that’s going to have unintended consequences.  Here in the United States, Trump has created a rabid following by playing on their worst fears of lack and scarcity.

The important thing to bear in mind is this: you cannot change the outside world.  We can influence it, we can take actions that will help change it, but we cannot change it directly.  The only thing we can change at all is our own lives.

What path are you on?

Choosing a path is how I view taking charge of my life.  Pathwalking is my philosophy for living life on my own terms.  Rather than do something that makes me unhappy, and instead of just accepting what is given to me, I prefer to use the advantages I have to create the most amazing life that I can.

What path I choose at any given time, I know, will change.  It will shift.  Paths are seldom straight or without obstacles, twists, turns, and bumps along the way.  What’s more, there is never only one path to choose, there are always options.

Choosing and having an end goal provides us with direction.  But this is actually not as important as taking the journey.  Every single day we are faced with choices.  Yes, there are going to be days where we have had insufficient rest, unexpected and unplanned frustrations, and other issues that are going to cause us not to work on living life on our own terms.

Sometimes you haven’t the energy to do more than let life live you.  Go with the flow, just be for a day or two.  Also, there will be days where curling up in a ball and crying your eyes out because of pain or loss or what-have-you is all you can do.

This is why mindfulness is so important.  When we are mindful of the fact that there are days we won’t be walking our path, we make it easier to return to it.  Further, when we are aware of this, we will be less inclined to beat ourselves up over it.

Welcome to the human condition

Nobody is perfect.  Or rather, everybody is perfectly imperfect.  We will get it wrong.  You and I will fail, hurt and be hurt, and from time to time feel like giving up.  Congrats – we are only human.

We are the most adaptable animals on this planet.  As such, you and I can make unique and totally varied choices for the lives we wish to live, and we can do some pretty amazing things as such.

What path you choose today you are not stuck on.  You can change, choose anew, or have days where you don’t move much along the way.  Recognizing there are always choices and options, however, opens you to pretty much endless possibilities.

What path would you choose to be on today?

This is the three-hundred eightieth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, walking along the path of life to consciously create reality.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way, and empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.

After more than 7 years of Pathwalking, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive your free eBook.  Thank you!

Name *FirstLastEmail *WebsiteSubmit

The post What Path Are You On? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Does Everyday Mindfulness Lead to Positivity?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

Positivity can be created and found with everyday mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of our selves.  It is being aware of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.  When we are mindful and aware of these, we are capable of creating virtually anything.

I know that this can seem like it’s totally untrue.  But it is true, because feeling positive or negative is a choice.

It is super-easy to allow ourselves to be carried along in the current of our culture and society.  All of these big happenings in the world today, lots of unpleasant and terrible matters – these can totally bring us down.  However, we are capable of choosing not to allow that to be.

This is where everyday mindfulness comes into play.  When we strive to be aware of what we are thinking, what and how we are feeling, and the actions we take from that point, we gain the ability to better manage and control these perceptions.

In fact, our thoughts, feelings, and actions are pretty much the only things in our lives over which we can exert any true control.

To do this, we need to practice everyday mindfulness.  This can be tricky, because so many of us live patterned lives that frequently can feel beyond our control.  However, asking the following questions can bring us into the here-and-now, and open us to more mindfulness:

What am I thinking?
How/what am I feeling?
How am I acting?

Just asking ourselves these three questions opens us up to being aware of ourselves.  With that mindfulness, we can change direction if where we are going is not where we wish to be.

Everyday mindfulness opens us up to positivity

Straight to the point, practicing everyday mindfulness is a means to an end.  It allows us, through our awareness, to better shape the world we live in.  If, for example, we have allowed our subconscious mind to pull us into negativity, we can use everyday mindfulness to change that.

Being aware of our mindset, emotional, and spiritual settings; allows us to recognize, analyze, and if needs be, change them.  If we find that we are feeling down, we can decide to take a new actions, alter our thoughts and feelings, and create or find positivity.

Many people see mindfulness as an overarching, abstract notion.  But the truth is, EVERYONE is capable of practicing everyday mindfulness.  The simple act of asking these questions, and others like them, is all it takes.  When we become aware of ourselves in the now, we can shift our perspective if this is not how we desire to be.

This will take practice, and probably several attempts.  But I think recognizing and practicing mindfulness everyday can help us with experiencing more positivity.  I don’t know about you, but I certainly prefer more positivity rather than negativity in my life.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action

Knowing practicing mindfulness does not have to be a complicated matter, we can ask questions to draw ourselves into the now, and be open to greater self-awareness.  When we become more aware, we have opened ourselves to more mindfulness, which gives us better control over our lives, with which we ultimately empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we become more aware and mindful, and tend to spread that feeling to others around us. As such, we can build more positive feelings.

We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we eradicate negative feelings, we open up space to let in more positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.

Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  An attitude of gratitude is a positive attitude that begets even more good energies, and that is always worthwhile.

This is the two-hundred and seventieth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

After more than 7 years of weekly blogging, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive a free eBook.

Name *FirstLastEmail *EmailSubmit

The post Does Everyday Mindfulness Lead to Positivity? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Are the Practical and the Hooky-Spooky Related?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

How do you navigate the waters between the practical and the hooky-spooky?

This is the question I have begun to really focus on of late.  For a long time, I delved deeper and deeper into hooky-spooky resources and ideas.  The Law of Attraction, energy healing, connections to earth energy, and seeking and connecting to source energy all get lumped into this.

There is a lot of bits from each of these ideas that I find I can get behind.  Maybe not the entire practices of in-depth concepts, but aspects of them resonate with me.

But I am also a fan of the practical.  How does one apply any of these notions without sounding like a hippy-crunchy wacked-out flake?  I mean, let’s be honest, I regularly espouse the belief that consciousness creates reality, and I am well aware that this can easily come across as totally wacky-crazy. The way my explanation of practicing Reiki was received, while amusing, also told me to keep that side of my self-identity to a rather limited audience.

However, in the past decade, more and more I am finding who the authentic ME is.  Who I am and what I stand for and how that makes me feel is, admittedly slowly, overcoming whom I desire for people to see me as.

In the interest of sharing my ongoing journey, I began blogging regularly.  As the notion of Pathwalking, and making my own destiny evolved into a deeper exploration of conscious reality creation, I have begun recently to reach another new level of progress.  This entails seeking and finding more practical applications of this notion.

Can the practical and the hooky-spooky coexist?

Short answer: Yes.

Much more involved answer: This is riddled with a large number of paradoxes, belief and faith matters, and trying to bring an apple and an orange into the same orbit, more or less.

Are you familiar with the idea of the unified field theory (aka the Theory of Everything)?  This has been called Einstein’s incomplete theory, which would tie together the ideas of electromagnetism and gravity as different expressions of a single fundamental field.  Two very different scientific precepts unified by…well, something.

Bringing the practical and the hooky-spooky together to coexist is similar.  Combining logic, which is one way to see practicality; and emotion, which is one way to see the hooky-spooky, seems almost impossible.

And yet they can be brought together with a single expression.  Mindfulness.

Both the practical, which includes science and reason, and the hooky-spooky explore mindfulness.  One takes a pretty straightforward and literal approach, while the other tends to be more airy.  Yet they are, in truth, the same.

Take meditation, one of the arguably most fundamental mindfulness practices.  Both believers in the practical and the hooky-spooky employ meditation to be still, and to be present in the moment.  Literally mindful of the here-and-now, focused on the breath.

While they may diverge – in one approach seeking to slow the mind and find calm in order to reset from the stresses of everyday life, and the other seeking a euphoric sense and connection with one’s higher self – both have the same goal.  Awareness of the self.

The practical and the hooky-spooky both reach for awareness

Whether you lean more to the practical or the hooky-spooky, both practices seek clearer awareness.  Why?  Because in being aware, and thus mindful, we gain empowerment, which in turn opens us up to more potential and possibility.

Further, when we are aware, we can better make choices and decision to help us live our lives.  Living in this stressful, fear-based society we share, we need all of the tools to do this that we can find.

Why are the approaches to the same end goal so different?  I believe that this is a matter of perception.  Since no two people see anything the same way, the most appealing approach is going to differ.  If you seek to better your life via the practical or the hooky-spooky, either way you are making a choice to assert what control you can over your life.

This ties into the idea of head and heart, logic versus emotion.  Sometimes they align, but other times they do not.  Overall, the majority of people I know lean more in one way than the other.

Which brings me to another super-important point.  These are not opposites, nor matters of black and white.  Like just about everything in the Universe, these notions truly coexist, because they often are just matters of different language used to seek understanding of the same thing.

However, for a lot of people, logic and emotion, the practical and the hooky-spooky, tend to clash.  People will also shy away from one or the other, in particular if one upsets or embarrasses them.

Which leads to those who decide not to decide.  A lot of people avoid choices and decisions as much as they can.  They seldom apply the practical or the hooky-spooky, because they believe stigmas that exist about both.

Stigmas of the practical and the hooky-spooky

Much of this gets based on our individual cultural experience.  But I expect this will probably be very familiar.

There is, in our current society, a major push towards anti-intellectualism.  People are rejecting good science, practical evidence, and educated, reasoned arguments due to several things.  The reasons include blind faith, religion, and the notion that the educated are keeping people down.  Hearsay and conspiracy theories and unsupported opinions held and spouted by various demagogues and so-called leaders fuel this.

On the other side of the coin, though, there is also a major push away from the hooky-spooky.  People are rejecting the notion of something bigger than themselves, largely in reaction to those who embrace it to the point of neglecting basic human decency.  The notion of flower power hippy-crunchy new-age incense-obsessed gurus is as unappealing as priests, rabbis, and other ministers, and their impractical and sometimes hateful and intolerant messages.

There are, undoubtedly, people who take these matters to extremes.  Always are.  But the vast majority fall somewhere in the middle.  When we work to be more mindful and more aware, we gain the ability to see how much more empowering creating unity over division can be for the whole world.

Whatever perceptions we apply, mindfulness can open us up to tremendous possibility.  But to get there, we need to be less fearful of the unknown, and more aware about how the practical and the hooky-spooky might differ or be the same.  Awareness and mindfulness can make our lives better, and from there we can help to make the world better.

Are you mindful of your thoughts, feelings, and actions, whether from a practical or a hooky-spooky approach?

This is the three-hundred seventy-ninth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, walking along the path of life to consciously create reality.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way, and empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.

After more than 7 years of Pathwalking, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive your free eBook.  Thank you!

Name *FirstLastEmail *EmailSubmit

The post Are the Practical and the Hooky-Spooky Related? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

How does an Abundant Universe Impact Positivity?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

We live in an abundant Universe.

What that means is that there is more than enough of everything, material or immaterial, that you desire for your life.

One of the important reasons to be more mindful is to be more capable of recognizing the artifices of the world we live in.  A lot of our beliefs that we buy into have been bought and paid for by someone or something else.  This is where cults big and small come into being, because a number of people accept somebody’s truth without really being aware of why they cling to that truth.

Fear is powerful.  There are any number of people out there in the world who like to use fear to maintain control.  Fear is how Brexit came to be.  I have little doubt fear is why Trump is President.  People buy into the fear, and the fear often peddles lack and scarcity to the masses.

When we see the world as lacking, and resources as scarce, abundance looks like a lie.  How can this possibly be an abundant universe when so many people are struggling and suffering?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, shall we?  A lot of the struggles these people have are due to false lack and scarcity created by others.  For example, when super-greedy business leaders get massive tax cuts, then go ahead and pay themselves obscene amounts of money, but THEN don’t bother to create jobs with living wages, they actually create more lack.

This insufficiency is an artifice created by people who care only for themselves.  And we buy into it, because we are made to feel powerless to change it.  The cycle continues.

To be abundant takes less than you might think

Since you are reading this, you either have, or have access to, a tool to get onto the internet.  As such, you have an incredible abundance of information at your fingertips.  That, right there, is a huge part of abundance.  It also means you can locate resources to build more abundance to further empower yourself.

Sure, there may be more that we desire to have, both tangible and intangible; but we have an abundance of things.  We have the ability to grow and change and choose for ourselves.  As such, we are empowered to recognize the false lack and scarcity that we are constantly sold, and to see how abundant our lives can be.

When we recognize that we have good things, and can have more, we can see how abundant our lives already are.  If we turn our focus away from lacking and insufficient, and be aware and mindful of abundance, we can consciously create a reality we desire for not just ourselves, but the world.  To be abundant takes only a little effort.

I do feel I need to digress a moment here.  When it comes to those of us who suffer various invisible disabilities, lack and scarcity readily come to mind.  However, despite depression, anxiety, and any other matters we might be coping with, we still have a choice.  Be a victim, or be a victor?  This former is lack and fear mentality, the latter is abundance mentality.  Yeah, there are days that suck, and the struggle feels almost insurmountable.  But we can still have abundance, and we can still choose to be mindful of this in how we see the world.

Abundant is material and immaterial

Another form of being abundant is recognizing there is more than enough kindness, love, and empathy in the world for those who are struggling, whether tangibly or intangibly.   These aspects of positivity go a long ways towards creating a better world overall.  We need to utilize them to generate greater abundance not just for ourselves, but for the world at large.

We are worthy and deserving of abundance.  Don’t let the fear mentality overwhelm and control you.  You and I can do amazing things when we are mindful of this.  We live in an abundant Universe.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action

Knowing that the Universe is abundant, we can work with this to find and generate more positivity, as well as keep the fear, lack, and scarcity at bay.  When we recognize how little it takes to be abundant, and become both mindful and aware of this, ultimately we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we become more aware and mindful, and tend to spread that feeling to others around us. As such, we can build more positive feelings.

We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we eradicate negative feelings, we open up space to let in more positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.

Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  An attitude of gratitude is a positive attitude that begets even more good energies, and that is always worthwhile.

This is the two-hundred and sixty-ninth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

After more than 7 years of weekly blogging, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive a free eBook.

Name *FirstLastEmail *PhoneSubmit

The post How does an Abundant Universe Impact Positivity? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Most Decisions Are Not Permanent

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

Few decisions that we make are truly permanent.

I know that, for me at least, on more than one occasion I either made no choice, procrastinated about, or did not fully commit to a decision.  Why?  Because what if I made the wrong one?

This is why recognizing that few decisions we make are truly permanent is so important to really living our lives.

No matter how much I work on being mindful, and aware of my thoughts, feelings, and actions, it is only a portion of what it takes to do pretty much anything and everything.  Conscious or subconscious, the reality we create and live in will be based on choices we decide upon every single day.

Because of the fear of making the wrong decision, a lot of us go through life indecisively.  Trouble is, when we allow that to be our reality, we tend to only get partway along any path we choose to travel upon.

Why?  Because probably the most important action in any given thought-feeling-action trifecta is the underlying decision.

For example, let’s say that I desire to move to England.  That’s the thought, the idea at the beginning.  Getting excited about this, basking in how it will feel to make such a drastic, transatlantic move is the obviously the feeling.  The action would be, say, buying a ticket to England.

But I have to decide to take that action.  If I become indecisive about it, I am moving nowhere.

Decisions are not scary unless we let them be

We choose to make decisions every single day.  We decide to get out of bed, eat breakfast, go to work, sit on the couch and watch TV or read a book, and so on.  Little things that matter, and that we frequently take completely for granted.

When it comes to bigger decisions, like taking or quitting a job, moving somewhere new, getting married or divorced – this can be scary.  There are all kinds of “what if” scenarios we play out in our heads, as well as concerns about the impact on not only ourselves, but the people in our lives.  It can be easily overwhelming, which in turn causes us to become indecisive, or to make no decision at all.

Why is this so overwhelming?  Because the consequences of a wrong decision can feel pretty steep.  What’s more, we often tend to create in our anticipation of these consequences far worse situations than may actually occur.

There is always a choice to be made, but decisions belong to us alone.  Of course, many of the decisions we can make will have an impact on other people, but except in specific instances, we cannot control that.  In particular on the emotional level.

Yet I know that I still have found many of my decisions over the years were scary in some way or other.  I was so worried about deciding wrong and not being able to fix it that I hedged my bets, or made no real decisions.

Choices we decide upon are not permanent

Overall, the decisions we make are not permanent.  Yes, there are exceptions to this, such as deciding to cut off a limb, end your life, or murder another person and such.  Once those bells are rung, they can’t be unrung.

Notwithstanding, the vast majority of our decisions lack permanence.  The primary issue boils down to ease or difficulty in changing them.

Another consideration is that you cannot undo them.  For some reason, we frequently seek out ways to undo this thing or that.  Truth is, despite the non-linear reality of time, you can’t undo what you have done.

But you can always do something new.  You can make a new choice, a new decision, and carry on from there.

For example – ending a relationship, whether a break-up, annulment, divorce, or what-have-you, is a completely separate decision from the one you made to enter into that relationship.  You are not undoing the decision to be in the relationship, you are deciding to get out of it.

This can also be applied to jobs, ownership of cars and homes and such, as well as where you live, what you wear, how to style and color your hair, and so on.  Decisions made before cannot be unmade, but you can make new decisions.

What happens when you make the wrong decisions?

Very few decisions are life-or-death.  Certainly some are, and by that same reasoning some decisions are largely irrevocable and permanent.  But the vast majority of decisions made are changeable.  They are impermanent, and can be transformed.

How?  By choosing to make a new decision.  It might be opposite that which you made before…or it might be utterly and completely different.  But you can change from one thing to another by employing a new decision.

When we make a wrong decision – and we will, because that’s a huge part of human nature – what generally happens is less consequential than our fears and beliefs about what may happen.  The amount of shame, hurt, upset, anger, and various other negative outcomes of a wrong decision are usually less in practice than they are in anticipation.

I am not denying here that some wrong decisions will have an impact on others.  Bad financial investments can hurt whole communities; contentious marriages can tear families apart; telling the hero to cut the red wire instead of the blue may blow up the bomb; yet overall you will emerge on the other side.  Maybe bruised and battered, perhaps wiser, but you will have the opportunity to make more decisions on the other side of wrong ones.

Yet it is an imperative factor in living the fullest lives we can that we make decisions.  It’s good to overcome the fear of making wrong decisions, and not being paralyzed by indecision. Consciousness creates reality when we use our thoughts, feelings, and decide on actions to live the lives we most desire to.

Don’t be afraid.  Choose to be decisive.

What decisions, big or small, will you make today?

This is the three-hundred seventy-eighth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, walking along the path of life to consciously create reality.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way, and empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here.

After more than 7 years of Pathwalking, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive your free eBook.  Thank you!

Name *FirstLastEmail *CommentSubmit

The post Most Decisions Are Not Permanent appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Do You Have a Choice?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

You always have a choice.  Even when you decide not to choose, that’s still a choice.

No matter what situation or experience you are having, good or bad, you have a choice.  Why?  Because you can decide how to think, feel, and act upon whatever happens to you.

Every single day we face choices.  Get out of bed, or hit snooze?  Watch TV or read?  Workout or eat ice cream?  Life is a constant set of choices, great and small.

This, however, is a potential source for extreme positivity.  This is because you can choose things that make you feel good, or will set up feel-good situations and experiences.

We each get to decide, when things happen in our lives, how those things will impact us.  Will we be victims, choosing to see ourselves as helpless and always struggling; or adaptors, choosing to see ourselves as strong and determined?  We can choose to wallow in self-pity, or revel in empowerment.

Yes, I know that this can be difficult, and may seem like a lie.  Everyone goes through difficult times and terrible things beyond our desires or control.  Yet recognizing this, we can also see that we are able to choose how to respond.  Do we allow ourselves to linger in negativity, or work on releasing it and seeking instead positivity?

This is why choice is such an important power.  There is ALWAYS a choice, even when it looks as if there is not.  Some choices are big, some are small, and we can even choose not to choose at all.  Yeah, that rhymed, but that makes it no less true.  We have choices, but we have to understand what they REALLY are.

What choice do you have?

When we are striving to be more mindful, we can see that our only real control in this life is in regards to what we think, how and what we feel, and what actions we take.  Because these are the only things in life over which we have real control, when we choose how to think, feel, and act, we well-and-truly empower ourselves.  This, in turn, makes our choices more substantial.

Thought, feeling and action may not seem like much – but in truth, they are EVERYTHING.  Consciousness creates reality.  Consciousness is thought, feeling is creation, acting is reality.  When we are mindful and aware of this, we empower ourselves.

This is why there is always a choice.  Because we create the world we live in every day from our ideas, emotions, and behaviors, choosing what they are matters.  We are more powerful than we realize, and that is a good thing.  You and I are more capable of doing some pretty amazing things in this world.

I know that sometimes this feels like a lie.  You may be hurting, depressed, anxious, scared, angry, or some combination of all of these. Yet you can still choose and decide what you desire to have, and change that which you don’t want.  It may take work, it may take time and energy, but it is possible.

Believe in yourself.  Align your heart and your head, listen to your gut, and ask yourself the questions that will bring you into the here-and-now.  When you decide that the choice is yours, and you have the ability to create or destroy with that, you can use your empowerment to seek and create positivity, for yourself and the world at large.

Will you decide to choose?

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action

Knowing that you always have the power to make a choice, you can decide how to think, feel, and act to create more and better options in your life.  When we recognize we have choices, and we decide to employ them, rather than not choose in any given situation, ultimately we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we become more aware and mindful, and tend to spread that feeling to others around us. As such, we can build more positive feelings.

We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings. When we eradicate negative feelings, we open up space to let in more positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.

Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  An attitude of gratitude is a positive attitude that begets even more good energies, and that is always worthwhile.

This is the two-hundred and sixty-eighth entry of my Positivity series.  It is my hope these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone.  Feel free to share, re-blog and spread the positivity.

After more than 7 years of weekly blogging, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive a free eBook.

Name *FirstLastEmail *MessageSubmit

The post Do You Have a Choice? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.

Are Extremes Real or Artificial?

This post contains affiliate banner links. For more info, see my disclosures.

 

The world is seldom the extremes we are presented.

There are many reasons why this is so, but the extremes of our world, the polar opposites, are seldom where anyone or anything actually exists.

I believe that a lot of the emphasis on the extremes is because they seem easy.  Either/or situations can be made to feel simpler than having more choices on the table.  What’s more, when we have these extreme opposites presented to us by those supposedly “in power” they create more lack and scarcity that can be used to further disempower everyone else.

It doesn’t matter what the opposites are that we are presented.  These extremes get employed in order to define broad strokes of the world we live in.  This gets applied to both tangibles and intangibles.

Unsure what I mean by these extremes?  Here’s a few to consider:

Fat/Thin
Good/Evil
Short/Tall
Republican/Democrat
Light/Dark
Love/Hate

For the most part, people and things tend to fall somewhere between the extremes.  I generally refer to this as the grey or colors between black and white.

What this amounts to is recognizing that placing people on opposite ends of the extremes is generally artificial, creating not only disempowerment, but more lack and scarcity in our world.

Why does this matter?  Because most of where people, situations, and actions fall in the world are between the extremes.

For example – how do you define short/tall?  Let’s say short is an adult under five feet, tall a person over six and a half feet.  I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of people in my life fall somewhere between these extremes.

This applies to intangibles, too.  Most people I know are not truly good nor evil, but mostly somewhere between one or the other.

The extremes are divisive

Presenting the world in terms of either/or is a great way to create divisions.  Look at politics, for example.  The blanket policies of the two major parties in the United States are not one-size-fits-all for the vast majority of people they supposedly represent.  I may lean mostly liberal, but that does not mean I don’t hold a few conservative views as well.

Why?  Because I live in the spaces between the extremes, as do most people.  Yet creating labels for people makes it easier to keep them separated and on opposite sides.  Without the extreme labels we get as created by the extremes, we bridge the gap between them, which is truly where most people exist.

I cannot deny that there ARE situations and people and things that do meet the extremes.  But in reality they are few and far between.  Why?  Because as individuals, we are each unique in how we think, feel, and act.

A one-size-fits-all notion, in light of more than seven billion people living across this planet, seems pretty silly and simplistic to me.  These extremes on opposite sides of the coin often are less realistic than the grey and colors between them.

The extremes may not even be true opposites

Recently I have taken a deeper interest in the Buddhist philosophy.  One thing that has quickly come to light is the notion that the opposite of a thing may not be what we think it is.

For example, let’s say you believe that the opposite of love is hate.  What if, instead, the opposite of love is the absence of love?

Isn’t hate the absence of love?  No, it’s a wholly different emotion, and one could even argue that it’s still tied to love.  It is entirely possible that the opposite of love is its absence, a non-existence of the idea and feeling of love in place of love.

Taking this a step further, if the opposite of a given extreme is the absence of that extreme, rather than the widely-accepted opposite, doesn’t that lend more credence to the notion that most people do not exist at the extreme ends?

I believe it is further proof that the world is seldom the extremes we are presented.  The world is those colors and greys between the black and white extremes…or the white and absence of white.

Why does this matter?  Because these extremes get used to create divisions in the world.  Whether tangible or intangible, they divide us.  Muslim and Jew, Brown skinned and white skinned, liberal and conservative, man and woman…they are used to keep us split, and in competition and conflict.

What if when we are mindful of this, we can be empowered, and disallow the divisions created to keep us disempowered?

We are not the extremes

We are more than the extremes, whether opposites, or an idea and its absence.  People are made up of greys and colors and ideas, thoughts, feelings, and innumerable material and immaterial bits.  We are all perfect and flawed, and we are all capable of feeling tremendous joy or intolerable pain and suffering.

When we are mindful of this being true of everyone, and the artifice of the extremes, we have a powerful tool to do and be better for ourselves, consciously create our reality, as well as make the world better.

Do you see that the extremes are less real than that which exists between them?

This is the three-hundred seventy-seventh entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for, and my personal experiences with, walking along the path of life to consciously create reality.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way, and empower myself and my readers with conscious reality creation.

Thank you for joining me.  Feel free to re-blog and share this.

The first year of Pathwalking, including some expanded ideas, is available here. After more than 7 years of Pathwalking, I have launched a Patreon to garner support for these works, and more.

Please take a moment to subscribe to my blog.  Fill in the info and click the submit button below and receive your free eBook.  Thank you!

Name *FirstLastEmail *PhoneSubmit

The post Are Extremes Real or Artificial? appeared first on The Ramblings of the Titanium Don.