M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 81

Why Walk Your Own Path? You Control More Than You Think

You are in control of more than you believe yourself to be.

This can be a particularly difficult concept to believe, but that doesn’t lessen the truth of it.  You are in control over how you think, how you feel, and how you act.

I know that sometimes it feels like that control is really, really limited.  Truth is, however, that the only limitations are those that you yourself place.  Otherwise, you have far more power and capability to change your life as you would most desire than you probably believe.

I created Pathwalking with the intent of taking control over my life, and creating the destiny I believe I am meant for.  I have long known that the standard courses in life were not for me, and overall I have not taken those particular paths.

One career since college?  Nope, not at all.  I have held numerous jobs, but not followed a single career path until fairly recently.  Marriage in my late twenties or early thirties and raise kids?  Nope, didn’t get married until my early forties, and we’re not going to produce children.  Buy a house, use it to build equity and maintain stability?  While I have been a homeowner, the current plan is to not buy again anytime soon, and rent for the purpose of mobility.

Why am I pointing these out?  Because it is way too easy to let society dictate control over our lives.  We live in a society that discourages us from striking out on our own path, rather than choosing something not-the-normal.  Rather than empower the individual, our society prefers to keep us underfoot, at the whim of our bosses, our religious and political leaders, our supposed superiors.

You are In Charge of You

Nobody is superior to anybody else.  It does not matter if they have more education, more money, more experience or are older than you or more specialized, the only person you answer to, when all is said and done, is you.  The only power anyone else enjoys over you is in place because you have given it away.

That is a particularly hard pill to swallow.  We are so indoctrinated into this idea that other people can control us, that other people can be responsible for our emotions and actions, that we cannot believe this is only true because we allow it to be.  Other people are only able to affect us as much or as little as we allow them to.

For example, let’s say you were in a relationship, but then your partner unceremoniously dumped you.  Yes, you feel hurt, probably betrayed, and upset…but chances are you blame them for hurting you.  They caused you to be hurt, they treated you poorly, and in all likelihood your feelings and opinion of your former partner will only spiral downwards from there.

Yes, it was the action on the part of your former partner that caused those bad feelings.  Yes, it is perfectly normal and totally human to feel hurt, betrayed and upset.  But, you are the one feeling these feelings. As such, you get to choose how long you will hold onto them, and how far along the downward spiral you care to travel.

You are the only one who can feel how you feel.  While there are uncountable outside influences that can and will effect how you feel, you are the only one who actually feels what you feel.  As such, the person who has caused you to hurt only hurts you for as long as you allow them to have that power over you.

Taking another step from here, you and only you are responsible for your actions.  Nobody can make you do anything you do not choose to do.  Yet because our society is so keyed into not being accountable for anything, it is easy to place the blame for bad actions we have taken -outside of ourselves.

Take Back Your Power

When you understand that you are the one in control of your own thoughts, feelings and actions, you get to choose how much of that control to exert.  You will feel upset for as long as you hold onto it, and you will not take an action that is not of your own accord, unless you choose to and blame it on another.  You are the one who gets to decide.  You get to choose.

You will notice over the coming weeks changes to this blog.  I am studying new ideas to improve what I share here, and that means things will be changing.  Since change is inevitable, happens whether we want it or not, I am exerted control over change, and choosing to alter this how I desire the change to be.

Last week I explained how intention is the reality of control.  Intention is composed of thought and feeling and action, and you are the only person who can control all of your thoughts, your feelings and your actions.  Nobody else can choose for you, nobody else can be in control, unless you allow them to be.  You can keep the power over your thoughts, feelings and actions, or you can give it away in part or total.  That is your decision.

Consciousness creates reality.  Recognizing our own control over the vast majority of our lives, we can be empowered to make almost anything we can imagine of them.  We are free thinkers; we are the only ones who feel the things we feel, however we feel them; we are the only ones who can act on our own thoughts and feelings.

You are in control of more than you believe yourself to be.  When you recognize this, embrace it and see just how endless the possibilities are before you.

What feels out of your control that you can take back for yourself?

 

This is the two-hundred eighty-second entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for and my personal experiences with walking along the path of life.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.

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

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

If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

How to Build Positivity: Getting into Better Shape

Taking steps to get in shape can generate massive positivity.

Getting in shape can also take a number of different forms.  Health is not simply measured as physical, but also mental, spiritual and emotional.  Giving attention to any one of these can improve our quality of life and be massively positive, while working on more than one or all of them can be hugely empowering.

Everyone is familiar with processes for getting into shape physically.  Diet and exercise, skin care, and other activities to maintain and improve ourselves are where the majority of the focus tends to go when we strive to get in shape.  We eat better, we exercise more, we work on taking better care of these physical vessels where we will exist for our whole time on earth.

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Getting into shape mentally can take several different forms.  Reading books and listening to lectures or taking other steps to improve our knowledge base, playing games to sharpen our minds, getting enough rest…anything that provides the mind stimulus or flexibility gets us into mentally better health.  Mental health also involves dealing with matters such as anxiety and depression, and working on keeping ourselves together in the best manners possible.

Getting into spiritual shape is easy to neglect.  Everyone has different types and degrees of faith, whether we are talking about a belief in God, or the Universe, or even in yourself.  This is not about religion, that’s a wholly separate idea.  Spiritual health is believing that we can do great things, that we can find and create the impossible, and that we recognize and care for our inner light, the energy that is our core being, our souls.  This is the least tangible aspect we possess in ourselves, but one that should not be neglected.

Emotional health is separate from mental health, in that our feelings and state of mind can differ.  Granted, when we feel low, when we are down or sad or depressed we will have a harder time creating the things we most desire.  Yet we are completely able to take ahold of and change our emotional state at will.  Exercising this particular ability really helps us to get into the best possible shape emotionally we can.

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There are two particular activities that can help us get into better physical, mental, emotional and spiritual shape.  The first is simply breathing.  Pausing to breathe intentionally from time to time heightens our awareness, draws more oxygen into our bloodstream, can clear the mind and help get ahold of our emotions, and raises the spirit.  The second is meditation.  Taking the time to be still and enter into the place of no mind provides even more stimulus and shaping up than intentional breathing.

Working on getting into better shape is always a matter of positivity, no matter what aspect you are working on to that end.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action.  Knowing that we can work on getting into better shape mentally, spiritually, and emotionally as well as physically, we gain an amazing tool for building positivity.  When we work on improving our state of being within any of these realms, we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings in the collective consciousness.  We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings.  When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.  Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the one hundred seventy-third 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.

In relation to Positivity, check out my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

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Crossing the Bridges: The Why of my Blog

Why do I blog?

Recently, a webinar I viewed took me to an unexpected place, and I began a course to learn new ways to earn money as a blogger.  I mean, this is something I love rather a lot, so why shouldn’t I be earning a living doing this?

One of the questions the instructor posed is, Why do you blog?  This is an interesting question, and the answer to it caused me to realize that this whole blog is unified, despite three regular, separate topics.

More than five years ago, as a New Year’s Action, I started Pathwalking.  I got this idea for figuring out how I was going to choose my own destiny in life, and start to walk my own path.  Despite not fully accomplishing my goal thus far, Pathwalking has taken me a long ways.  I have gotten better at choosing for myself, and over the past five years my life has taken many dramatic and positive changes.  I am constantly improving upon the premise, which is why I continue to post to Pathwalking weekly.

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One Monday morning, about three-and-a-quarter years ago, I encountered a barrage of extreme negativity across Facebook and Twitter and G+, my primary social media outlets.  It was like absolutely everyone I knew was either having a lousy day or expecting to.  I decided that I needed to share something positive, and thus was Positivity born.

Every week I find something positive to write about.  Frequently it’s an abstract concept, but I believe that more often than not these intangibles are the most powerful things to build and sustain positivity.

While I was getting coaching at the start of this year, I decided I needed a third post.  This one would be less in the abstract, and more direct, more personal.  While both Positivity and Pathwalking serve me, they are also broader, more wide-ranging concepts.  Crossing the Bridges, on the other hand, is much more personal.  This is not just the journey in a general sense, this is MY specific journey, MY pathwalk.

Even when I occasionally post about my writing projects or topical, political rants, I am still working on the same concept, the same overall notion.  The Ramblings of The Titanium Don is not just some random, mishmash of ideas and writing, it is, as the new tagline states, exploration of conscious reality creation and other matters.

I frequently state that Consciousness Creates Reality.  This is not an original phrase of mine, my best friend Kristin said it to me years and years ago.  Yet it is, I believe, the truth of how the Universe works, that we can manifest our own destinies, and we can do, have or be pretty much anything we believe we can be.

No, you cannot necessarily become an astronaut if you have neither a science nor military background.  Of course, if you make enough money you could buy a seat on a future Virgin Galactic flight, and viola, you’re an astronaut.  The point to this is that most, if not all of our limitations are wholly in our own minds.

My blog is an exploration of doing more to live the fullest, most interesting life possible.  Both for me, and I hope for you.  The thing is, none of us are alone.  Ever.  We get lonely, we may be sitting in a solitary place without anyone near, but we are still not truly alone.  Despite its ability to disconnect us, the internet and social media and smartphones and their ilk can also be empowering.

One thing I have come to believe is that society strives to disempower us.  When we were children, this was in many ways for our own good.  We needed the education, support and boundaries our parents and teachers set for us, in order to understand how to learn, to grow and change, and to know right from wrong.  Unfortunately, when we reach the point where we should be learning to empower ourselves, society places additional limiting beliefs on who we are, and who we can and should become.

Society expects us to get some form of post-secondary education, or learn a vocation, or just get a job.  We find that if we want to explore the world or follow a band on tour or even start our own business we’ll encounter many, often well-meaning people suggesting that we conform to the norm.

If we do go ahead and conform, we will be inundated with people attempting to disempower us.  Politicians exerting control, religious leaders condemning alternative viewpoints, bosses and even family members working to force our paths to what they think is best of us.  This is why I believe that society at large strives to disempower us.

Why?  Because if we empower ourselves, we won’t need many of the trappings of our society.  We will become more capable of not just coping, but creating bigger and better lives for ourselves.  When more of us are at work doing that, we can and will inspire others to become so empowered.  I believe that we can change the status quo, and consciously create a better reality for everyone.

That is why I blog.  I am working on empowering myself.  As I become more empowered, I want to inspire YOU to become self-empowered, rather than perpetuating our societal disempowerment.  When more of us become aware, and consciously work on creating reality, I am absolutely certain the world we can create together will be amazing beyond our wildest dreams.

Consciousness Creates Reality, and I want to create the best possible reality I can, and help you do that, too.  I have a lot of new work to do.

As always, thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me!

Also – please check out my new about page.

 

GOAL LOG – Week 20:

Diet:  I believe that I am doing pretty well with the lower carb, lower sugar diet overall.

Exercise:  I fenced Tuesday and Thursday, hit the gym Monday-Wednesday.  Walked a lap around the small lake near work Mon, Tuesday and Thursday.

Writing:  The three blog posts were done, worked on editing Journey of a Thousand Miles on four days.

Meditation:  Every day over the last week, never less than 8 minutes a day.

Gratitude:  I have expressed gratitude for 5 things every day last week.

 

This is the thirty-fourth entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series.  My collectively published writing can be found here.

Pathwalking 281 – Intention

Intention is the reality of control.

When you take an intentional action, you have a purpose, and are not just doing some thing for the sake of doing the thing.  Intent means there is a plan to gain something from the action taken.

I have been writing more or less since I began Pathwalking that one of the main reasons to walk one’s own path is to take control of your own destiny.  I want to create a unique, interesting life that I wake up excited to partake of day in, day out.  I don’t want to just let life happen or let circumstances dictate who I can be.  That is why I am choosing my paths for myself.

A lot of people get hung up on the idea of control.  They want to control how things happen in their lives, and often become unhappy when that does not work out as intended.  The thing is, control means nothing if there is no intent behind it.

What does that mean?  What that means is that taking an action for the sake of acting is ineffectual.  It’s the equivalent of igniting the rocket engine but not bothering to steer, and hoping you’ll fly straight and true.  Sure, you’re moving…but are you moving where you want to?

Intentional action is igniting the rocket engine and then steering the rocket where you want it to go.  You are not just acting, you are acting with purpose, with a plan, with a goal in mind.

I want to be in control of my destiny.  That’s a pretty lofty idea.  Along the way there are going to be twists and turns and obstacles and other factors that will change my course, alter my plans, and maybe even shift the destiny I believe I want.  So it is important to work to control only the seemingly little bits that are, and always will be, mine to control.

This begins with thoughts.  You, and you alone, are responsible for your own thoughts.  Yes, you can read things that will give you ideas, and you can certainly talk to people who might influence your thoughts.  But when all is said and done, you are in control.  You are the only one who can think the thoughts in the way that you think them.

The same is true of feelings.  You, and you alone, are responsible for your emotions.  Yes, you can have encounters that will make you feel certain ways, and you will talk to and associate with people who will make you feel good and bad, superior and inferior.  But when all is said and done, you are in control.  You are the only one who can feel the feelings in the way that you feel them.

Frequently, we do not acknowledge this.  We blame society, leaders, teachers, parents, lovers, friends and enemies for making us think and feel certain things.  We give away our power, and we let unintentional thoughts and feelings dominate us.  This can lead to unintentional consequences, and before we know it we are reacting to problems and putting out fires and fighting to regain lost control more often than actually taking it.

This is where intention comes in.  Intention is about first directing your thoughts.  Intention might as well be the initial idea.  For example, mine: “I want to be a best-selling author”.

That is the idea.  So the thought that stems from there leads to other thoughts, which in turn lead to feelings and then to actions.  From the thought of “I want to be a best-selling author” to the feeling of “I will feel fulfilled and happy when I succeed,” then intentionally feeling how that feels; inspired, intentional actions are engaged and movement happens.

These are actions that have the idea behind them, the intent…and intentional action is, just to reiterate the point, not just accelerating down the highway in a rocket-powered car, but steering that car along the road.  That is what intention is, and intention is the key to taking control.

Intention is the reality of control.  This comes from having thought and feeling and direction leading into action.  Acting without intent might get you where you want to go, but still leaves an awful lot up to chance.  If you are seeking your own path, then you want to take every opportunity to traverse it as best suits you.  Being intentional takes in the control that we desire to have.

One important note of caution.  Intent is not the same as knowing how. I have written before about sometimes getting so caught up in the how of a process that I fail to manifest anything.  I have the thought, feel the feeling, take an intentional action, but then wonder how all this will actually get me to my goal.  I will constantly question how the frequency changes and shifts matters to me.  Intent is not knowing the how of the action, per se; it is putting energy into the action to generate the vibrational frequency necessary to attract the goal and manifest the desired outcome.

Conscious creates reality.  We have the power to manifest almost anything we want for our lives.  Once we see how true this really is, we gain an amazing amount of power over our world.  Intentional actions following our thoughts and feelings will let us achieve almost anything we can think of.  Intention truly is the reality of control.

Are your actions intentional?  What intentional actions would you like to be taking?

 

This is the two-hundred eighty-first entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas for and my personal experiences with walking along the path of life.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.

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

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

If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

Positivity: Fresh Air

Cliché though it may be, there is nothing like fresh air to clear your head.

I like to take a few minutes during my work day to get a sun/air break.  Step outside, get some fresh air, escape the stale office air and my computer.

There is something cleansing, both physically and emotionally, in breathing in fresh air.  It awakens the senses, it rejuvenates the soul, it opens us up to possibilities.

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I know that this is super-trite, but I find for me, at least, when stepping outside I breathe deeper than I do when I am in the office.  There is something about the open air under the sky that causes me to draw more breath.

We seriously take the power of breathing for granted.  I mean, for real, this is the single most automatic thing we do.  Our bodies demand oxygen to survive, so we are always subconsciously breathing.  Yet frequently we employ breath to calm our nerves and steel our resolve and to prepare of cope with a given situation.  How often do we “take a deep breath” to allow a moment to get clear on our thoughts before we speak, or to keep ourselves from expressing excess anger or frustration?

One of the reasons why focusing on your breathing is a primary key for mediation is because we are always doing it.  It’s automatic, it requires no thought, and we do it every single minute of every single day of our lives.  When we concentrate on it, focus on breathing in and out, we ultimately become aware, conscious and present in the here-and-now, which in turn lets us tune out the constant chatter in our brains for the preferred void of meditation practice.

When we become frustrated; when we get angry; when we are particularly tired, getting fresh air and being conscious of our breathing can go a long ways towards building and sustaining more positivity.  We all want more positive things in our lives, and this instinctive act provides us a mechanism to easily build more.

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If you are currently feeling less-than-good about anything, take a moment, go out for some fresh air.  Breathe deeply, intentionally, and see if that begins to improve your mood.  I know it often works wonders for mine.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action.  Knowing that getting some fresh air and being conscious of our breathing we can clear away negativity, we gain a tool that is always with us, all the time.  When we take the time to get some fresh air, to breathe deeply, intentionally and fully consciously, we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings in the collective consciousness.  We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings.  When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.  Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the one hundred 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.

In relation to Positivity, check out my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

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Crossing the Bridges: Finding Joy

What brings me joy?

Sunlight.  Writing.  Reading.  Time with my wife.  Time with my friends.  My cats.  My niece and my nephews.  Driving with the windows down and the radio blasting.  Helping other people.

I want more joy in my life.  I want to spend more time happy, excited to greet the day and write my stories and share my blogs and do everything I can to make at least my corner of the world the best place that it can be.

I want to have abundance and be wealthy so that I can share more of my time, more of my ideas, more stuff with more people.  I want to be a positive role model and influence people to be empowered and imaginative and to bring light to dark places.

I am a writer of fantasy, sci-fi, Steampunk and more.  I also write philosophy, self-help, and contemplative political and socially-minded pieces.  I have bills to pay and responsibilities to people, a decent-paying but draining, boring job; Crossing the Bridges is about putting all of these often disparate bits together so that I can have the more joyful life I desire to.

I know that I can do better than this.  I know that I can take my writing to the point where it will pay my bills and allow me to have more of what I want from life.  I am right at the cusp, right at the point where all of the self-help books I have read and listened to say you need to get uncomfortable, push through and not give up.  I can feel it with every fiber of my being.

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I want to know how.  Of course, all of the self-help books I read and listen to say the how is not my concern, I need to put my focus on the here-and-now and the future AS here-and-now.  Get caught up in the how, and I will trip myself up and wonder why I am not crossing that barrier to be where I truly desire to be in my life.

I know nothing happens in a bubble.  I am not in a bubble, I have been thinking, feeling and acting on what I want in different ways.  I believe because I have proof this all works.  I need to spend more time at a higher frequency, and joy is one of the highest frequency generators there is.

This has become a recurrent theme of late, because I am coming to realize that joy is one of the most desirable things I can attain.  Joyful things are happy things, and being happy is the key to creating more of the things I want from life.

It is all too easy to lose sight of the things that bring me joy.  Spend enough time online and you’ll be overwhelmed by bad news, negativity, anger, intolerance and worse.  I spend the majority of my daylight hours at my job, which, while it pays me decently, is majorly boring and occasionally frustrating.  It takes very little to feel blah, or to feel down, and that doesn’t do me any good for raising my frequency to draw in more good.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to feel down.  Nor sad.  Nor angry.  Nor depressed.  Yes, things are going to happen day to day that will shift my emotional state all over the place, but I would rather do something that I want to do and be content than be doing something I feel obligated to do and be held back.

Ergo, looking at what brings me joy can help me to find these things, and use them to experience more joy.  The list I have above is just a few of the things that make me feel joyful, and I have no doubt I can easily find others.  But employing the things that make me feel joy will allow me to build more happiness for myself.  When I feel happier, I raise my vibrational frequency and am more likely to attract what I seek.

I need to be better about not letting boredom bring me down.  I don’t get depressed, per se, I just get tired and lose interest in doing much of anything.  This, in turn, keeps my vibrational frequency lower than I need it to be to draw the things I want.  What’s worse, boredom begins to start me contemplating the hows.

How will the Universe take my thoughts, feelings and intentional actions and provide me what I want?  Is there a precise frequency I need to reach to manifest my desires?  How do I make this work more for me?  How can this possibly work when I am sitting here wasting my time with nothing to do?

This is why it is so important to identify things that bring me joy, so that I can use them to change my attitude, change my energy and subsequently raise my frequency.    I need to turn my attention away from my boredom, away from seeking the how, and remember that conscious reality creation works, the how is not mine to understand.

It is important to keep more things that bring me joy in my head, so that I have tools I can turn to in order to combat lower frequencies.  I know and understand what I need, I just need to employ this when I get bored.  Keep moving forward.  As always, thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me!

 

GOAL LOG – Week 19:

Diet:  I continue doing pretty well with the lower carb, lower sugar diet overall.

Exercise:  I fenced Tuesday and Thursday, hit the gym briefly Monday.  Walked a lap around the small lake near work one day, two laps another day.

Writing:  The three blog posts were done, worked on editing Journey of a Thousand Miles…and did some writing in my Modern Alchemist story.

Meditation:  Every day over the last week but one, never less than 9 minutes a day.

Gratitude:  I have expressed gratitude for 5 things six of seven days last week.

 

This is the thirty-third entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series.  My collectively published writing can be found here.

Pathwalking 280

Balancing living in the now with our overall perception of time is an interesting challenge.

As I concluded last week, I have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the societal obsession with time, and my work to withdraw from that perception is a challenge.  But because I desire to consciously create the reality I most want to have, I am doing anything and everything I can think of to more regularly live in the here and now.

What tools do I have to employ for this process?  That is the question.  Like many such things in life, this is a matter of trial and error.  No one of these works entirely by itself, it is combinations of these I strive to employ as warranted.  Different actions at different times will produce different effects.

What does that mean?  What that means is that while the goal is rather objective, the process is almost entirely subjective.  Situation, mood, weather, location, and all kinds of other factors are going to be a part of when and where tools can be applied.  Some are passive, some are active.

Let’s start with the most active tools.

Meditation.  When I meditate, I bring myself totally into the moment.  Not only am I in the here-and-now while meditating, I also get to connect directly to source energy.  The Powers-that-Be are most readily accessible, because I shut out the world around me and work to be present and still.

This does not require a lot of time, but of late I have been striving for 10 minutes or more per day.  Yet even taking 5 minutes a day can do a body good.

There are several ways to practice meditation.  My preferred method is to sit cross-legged, back against a wall, eyes closed and focused on my breathing.  I like to have some form of white-noise in the background, usually a flowing stream or ocean waves.  I put my attention on my breathing, slowing it as best I can…and when random thoughts flit about like squirrels in my brain I work on not grabbing ahold of them, but refocusing on my breathing.

Other ideas for meditation include visualizing connecting to some sort of internal or external energy source.  Or if you prefer not to close your eyes, focus on a single point, allowing yourself to drift.  Meditation is the ultimate tool to put yourself in the here-and-now.

Exercise.  Whether I lift weights, use an elliptical, walk around a lake, or attend fencing practice, exercising is a great means to put myself into the here-and-now.  I am doing something that is good for the body, which in turn is good for the soul.  Exercise changes breathing, changes heart rate, and frequently puts me in the moment.

Even fifteen minutes of exercise is good for you, while twenty to thirty is scientifically proven to be really beneficial.

Both meditation and exercise also can put you into the zone, or the void, or what Musashi called the “Place of No Mind”.  That is the space where you are entirely in the moment, enfolded within perfect harmony, where time loses meaning and you can almost see and feel everything in slow-motion.  This is the ultimate expression of being wholly in the here-and-now.

More passive tools include:

Questions.  I work to ask myself, several times a day, How Am I?  What am I thinking?  What am I feeling?  Am I thinking about things ahead of me, or in the now?  Am I feeling abundant?  Just asking these questions causes me to be aware, and awareness draws me into the present.  I write out my answers between three and five times a day.

Mantras and Affirmations.  Having a simple mantra, no more than a word or two, and repeating it several times a day opens awareness, and places you in the present.  Similarly, a longer affirmation can have the same effect.  The difference between these, as I understand it, is that a mantra is more general and over-arching, like Abundance or Om or Peace or Love and so forth.  Affirmations are more direct and specific statements, like I am a money magnet or I am a successful writer who inspires and empowers people.  Saying these, reading these places you in the present, which then allows you the best opportunities to successfully manifest whatever you are seeking.

Take time for yourself.  Get offline.  Step away from your desk.  Leave your mobile devices behind.  Go somewhere you can be entirely by yourself, preferably somewhere you can breathe deep and collect your thoughts.  Modern society keeps us constantly connected to one another, but this actually serves to distract and isolate us more than truly connect us.  Getting lost online or playing a game or conversing via text with a friend can be a nice distraction, but actually serves to mask our awareness.  It is not, in my opinion, dissimilar to using alcohol or opiates to mask pain.

I am not saying it’s not good to have occasional distractions.  It is important, however, to be aware of what they are, and the difference between awareness of the here-and-now and distraction.

Time is not our enemy.  Time is not a ravenous wolf that will one day catch us and destroy us.  Time is not against us.  Time is not beating us down…unless we choose to let it.  Time is only linear if we perceive it as such.  Living more in the here-and-now can help us escape the societal obsession with linear time, and when we better see that time is an illusion, we gain an incredible tool to allow us to consciously create reality.

We have plenty of tools to choose from, and we get to choose when and how to employ them.  How do you most frequently perceive time?

 

This is the two-hundred eightieth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas and my personal experiences in walking along the path of life.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.

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

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

If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

Positivity: Joy

Joy is one of the ultimate expressions of love.

We tend to not do nearly enough things that bring us joy.  We believe the lie that joyful things should only come in small doses, and that it is a limited achievement that should be particularly savored.

Why is this true?  Because we have accepted it as so.  Yet, really, it is not the truth.  Joy can and should be one of the driving motivations for everything we do.

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Are we here on this planet, running around in these meat suits, simply so that we can labor and toil in sometimes unpleasant situations to earn currency to buy the essentials, let alone everything else?  Or are we here to experience life, to live as fully and abundantly as we can, with new adventures on a frequent basis?

If consciousness creates reality, and we live in an abundant Universe – and I am certain this is the truth of how it really is – then joy is not something that you store away like retirement money in an IRA.  Joy is an experience to be had as frequently as possible.

What is joy?  Joy is a feeling of tremendous happiness and excitement.  It is the thrill a dog shows its owner every single time they return home, no matter how long or not they have been gone.  The obvious pleasure and happiness as a dog squeaks and rumbles and wags their whole butt in addition to their tail, hardly able to contain his or her self.  That is a perfect example of joy.

What brings you joy?  There are things that we often take for granted, like listening to a cat purr as you pet it; savoring the flavor of the perfect chocolate mousse; the excitement as the trumpets blare at the opening credits of your favorite movie; the ding of a text message on your phone from your sweetie; all of these can bring us joy, and make us feel good.

Why does this matter?  Because we live in a world where our society is inundated with messages of lack, of sorrow, of fear and anger.  Changing this has to start small, and that means we can and should start with ourselves.  If consciousness creates reality, and everyone and everything is energy, then we all vibrate at various frequencies.  If we resonate joy, we draw more joyful things to us.  Joy being positive, it will draw more good things our way.  The end result is that we will be happier, and when each of us can be happier we can then strive to share that with others and change society.

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Love is the ultimate in drawing positive energies our way.  Joy is an expression of love, and I know I prefer joyful things to sorrowful…don’t you?

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action.  Knowing that joy is an expression of love, which draws more good things to us, we can work to experience more joyful things.  When we work with things that bring us joy, we make ourselves happier, and when we are happier we empower ourselves.  When we feel empowered, we often spread that feeling to others around us, and as such can build more positive feelings in the collective consciousness.  We can use the positive feelings this generates to dissolve negative feelings.  When we take away negative feelings, we open up space to let in positive feelings, and that is something we can be grateful for.  Gratitude leads to happiness.  Happiness is the ultimate positive attitude.  Positive attitude begets positive energy, and that is always a good thing.

 

This is the one hundred 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.

In relation to Positivity, check out my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.

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Crossing the Bridges: Empathy and Feeling Joy

Feeling joy has been something of a challenge of late.  I am an empath.  As an empath, I constantly feel the emotional states of other people around me.

What does that mean?  It means when many, many of my friends and loved ones are feeling anxious because of, oh, say, awful acts of inhumanity on the part of our government…I get not only my own anger, frustration and dismay over what is happening, but also all of theirs as well.

I need to let go of that.  Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way stating that any of us should not be angry over terrible happenings.  Anger can lead us to action.  The key is to do exactly that – take that negative energy, take that emotion and use it to do something useful.

Yes, I am aware that anger leads to the dark side of the force…but I interpret that thus: if I use my anger over an atrocity to commit another atrocity, that’s bad.  If I use my anger to build something positive, that’s good.  More topically, I can take my anger and go online and create memes calling various congresspeople out over their lack of compassion…OR I can find and support someone to stand with in order to replace them in the next election.

The point of this is that, yes, it’s ok, and totally human, to experience and feel negative emotions.  But in order to consciously create a better reality, we can’t hold onto them, we can’t draw power from them.  Focusing on what we don’t want only brings more of that out.  We have to release the negative in some way, so that we can focus instead on the things we DO want, in order to work to draw those to us.

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Sometimes releasing the negativity is easier than others.  It gets particularly complicated when I am inundated by the emotions of people around me, whether it’s overt or seething.  Being an empath, I am keenly aware of the emotional states of those around me, and doubly so my loved ones and friends.

Now the irony of all of this is that, while an empath all my life, for decades I didn’t do so well with expressing my own emotions.  This could become a long and complicated tale about my childhood and various things that happened in my youth which caused me to close myself off, but I spent years in therapy to cope with that.  It’s also really important to note that I do not blame anyone else for these issues…I recognized them, I took responsibility for them being mine, and have been working on changing them.

Point is, once I learned how to feel these emotions for myself, which I could only previously sense in others, I had to learn how to recognize what belonged to me, and as such I gained key insight into the actual meaning of the emotions in question.  This could turn into a serious digression, but that will totally deviate from the point.

Joy is an expression of love.  Love is the ultimate generator of positive energy.  That positive energy is the key to raising my vibration, and with that to crossing the various bridges between my worlds, and manifesting the life I most desire to live.

I want to do things that will bring me more joy.  I want to write, I want to be outdoors in the sunlight when I can, I want to read, I want to exercise and not be confined to a nine-to-five gig that might pay my bills, but bores me to tears.  I want to spend more time with my wife, my loved ones, my friends, my cats, my hobbies.  I want to go for drives with the radio blasting as I sing along to my vast collection of 90’s rock, Barenaked Ladies, and Broadway Showtunes.  Yes, really, my musical tastes are pretty eclectic.

When the emotions of others feed my own negative emotions, it takes a lot of effort to push through, to refocus on positives, to take actions that will help me go where I want to go and do what I want to do.  I have to pause, I have to take a deep breath, and I have to fight the desire to curl up in a ball and whimper piteously or scream in rage.  I am the only one who can control MY emotions, and I need to assert that control unless I want them to control me.

Acknowledge the good, the bad and the ugly.  Hold onto the things that empower, and find release for those that do not.  When they are not my own emotions I am catching onto, I need to also accept those feelings, but equally release them in the ways I would release my own.  I am aware of how this works.

Human beings are complicated creatures.  We are unique in our ability to create incredible, globe-shaping (and wrecking) tools; adaptation to nearly every conceivable environment; ability to grow and learn; potential to live small or large, and perform a wide range of activities for our basic and advanced survival.  We don’t just eat, sleep, reproduce and cycle with nature, we can shape it however we like.

We are empowered to do, be, or have pretty much anything and almost everything we can conceive of.  The key is to think, to feel, and to take inspired and intentional actions.  Some days are more challenging than others, but every day we can choose anew.

You and I have more power than we realize.  When we are able to feel joy we can use that to raise our vibrational energy, and when our frequency is higher we can accomplish almost anything we want to.

I will feel the feelings, mine and those of others, but I will strive to only hold onto those which can empower me.  No matter what is happening, here and now I am alive and well, and my potential is pretty amazing.  I feel for you and what you are going through…and you are also alive, here and now, and your potential is equally as amazing as mine.

Let’s do this.  As always, thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me!

 

GOAL LOG – Week 18:

Diet:  I am still doing pretty well with the lower carb, lower sugar diet overall.

Exercise:  I fenced Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Walked a lap around the small lake near work one day, did a good workout at the gym one day.

Writing:  The three blog posts were done, worked on editing Harbinger a couple days, and even did some writing in my sci-fi epic.

Meditation:  Every day over the last week, one day for 7 minutes, one day 8 minutes, otherwise 12-15 minutes a day.

Gratitude:  I have expressed gratitude for 5 things every day last week.

 

This is the thirty-second entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series.  My collectively published writing can be found here.

Pathwalking 279

Finding the balance between living in the now and setting goals for the future is uniquely challenging.

Pathwalking is about taking control of your destiny, and making choices along the path of life to manifest what you want from it.  This is not just living life come-what-may, like so many people do, but instead making decisions, making choices about raising your vibrational energy, and manifesting a life you want to live.

Why bother?  Because I don’t know about you, but I want to wake up in the morning excited to face my day.  I want to enjoy every moment of my day, not spend long periods of it wishing I were elsewhere, or doing something else, or being someone I am currently not, but could still become.  We are here in this reality to learn, to grow, to be the most we can be.

While one can certainly take an aimless journey along a given path, having a goal gives us a reason, gives us a purpose, gives us something to strive for.  Maybe it will make us better, maybe it will make us more abundant, but ultimately it’s probably something that will make us happy.

Yet, in order to get from here to there, it’s insanely important to live in the now.  While this may seem like a contradiction, it’s actually the key to success.

Let’s go with my goal.  I intend to be a best-selling author.  Great, I have the goal at the end of my path.  Now, here and now, what thoughts, feelings and actions can I take to get to that goal?  It is important I do not neglect the present, because this is where I am; yet it’s equally important that I do not get lost in the past, hashing over matters that I wanted to change or do differently.

Time is relative.  Einstein taught us that time is illusionary, and that our perception of it is unique to ourselves.  I got into this further in a recent Crossing the Bridges.  However, current reality is the product of past thought, feeling and action.  That’s simply the way it works, we are who we are based on how we thought, what we felt and how we acted before now.

To get to where we desire to be in the future, it’s important to be aware of how we are thinking, feeling and acting in the now.  This will allow us to direct our energy, to raise vibrational frequency, and to consciously create our desires.  The past is past, simple as that, and only by working with awareness here and now can we affect the outcome for the future we wish to manifest.

BUT, of course, the danger is focusing on that future and neglecting the present.  If you lose touch of where you are RIGHT NOW, because you are focusing on the outcome, life continues to live you, and you give control away.  Your subconscious can create your reality, but chances are you will not get what you most want.  This is why awareness, consciousness of here and now, is the key to manifesting the desired outcome.

Yes, we need to learn lessons from the past, because those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.  Yes, we need to visualize the future as if it’s already here, but that is not about daydreaming as much as bringing the idea into your awareness, HERE AND NOW, to make it part of your consciousness.  Once we think and feel the desired outcome as though it is already a part of our here and now, a part of our current awareness, then we give it the vibration and energy to consciously create reality as we most desire it.

That’s crazy, right?  Except by living in the now, while envisioning the desired outcome in the future ALSO in the now, we empower our potential, and increase the energy needed to consciously create just that.  That is, of course, what Einstein was talking about.  When we understand, really understand, that time is wholly based on our individual perception of it, we get to choose to take control of it, or be a victim of it.

We frequently blame time for lack, for limitation, for failure.  But time is an illusion.  Any lack and limitations we put on time are entirely of our own doing.  Which means we have the power to choose for ourselves how best to use time.

One major issue in all of this is society.  Our society is absolutely obsessed with linear time.  Our entire culture frequently gets hyper-focused on matters of linear time, so much so that we have created precision atomic clocks in order to measure its’ passing.   We are always looking at time in straight lines, viewing yesterday, examining tomorrow, calling ourselves too old or too young, saying we are running out of time, time marches on, and so on and so forth.  Is it any wonder we are so easily distracted from living in the now?

Here’s the real kicker in all of this.  I do not know the best way to live in the now.  I have been thoroughly indoctrinated into the societal obsession with time, and my work to withdraw from that perception is a challenge.  But because I desire to consciously create the reality I most want to have, I am doing anything and everything I can think of to more regularly live in the here and now.

What tools do I have to employ for this process?  That is a question I will examine further next week.

Do you live in the past, future or present most frequently?

 

This is the two-hundred seventy-ninth entry in my series. These weekly posts are ideas and my personal experiences in walking along the path of life.  I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world along the way.

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

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

If you enjoy Pathwalking, you may also want to read my Five Easy Steps to Change the World for the Better.