M.J. Blehart's Blog, page 85

Positivity: Go ahead, Smile

What makes you smile?

What can you look at, listen to, or read that puts a smile on your face?  Is there anyone you can speak with who can make you laugh and smile, someone who has that effect on you?

We all need to take some time to seek out sources of light and laughter.  We all need to find and enjoy things that make us smile.

We are living in a world where fear and anger and terror are used to control us.  We are threatened by the fear of scary and terrible things more than the actual scary and terrible things.  Those in power are using the fear to divide and conquer us, and it is very hard to turn away from this.

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Yet we are striving to resist.  We are fighting back, we are denying their use of fear to overcome our reason, and in many ways their unprecedented and outright false claims are uniting us to do more to keep them at bay, and retake our own power.

Yet as we strive to find dignity and sanity in the face of almost overwhelming negativity, we neglect our own need to feel good.  Hell, to some degree it feels almost wrong to consider how you are feeling when you are working for the greater good of the world at large.

Yet if all we do is give and give, and do nothing for ourselves, we will run out of energy, we will lose our drive and ambition and we will find ourselves stuck and unable to continue.  We will lose ourselves in our attempt to do good.

This is why it is important that we still find things that make us smile.  We need to find joy, we need to take and enjoy moments of delight.  It is like recharging any cell phone after prolonged use.  If we don’t put energy back it will be totally depleted, and of no good to us when we most need it.

We need to all allow ourselves to smile, to laugh, to feel happiness and joy, even when we are faced with tremendous negativity, by fear, anger, disquiet, chaos and disorder.   Frankly, if we don’t have happiness in our lives, then what are we fighting for in the first place?  What’s the point of resisting what make us unhappy if we lose touch with happiness in the process?

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Find things that bring a smile to your face.  Laugh.  Feel joyful, feel happy.  This will recharge your positivity, and when you are feeling more positive you will have more power to create better and not simply struggle against what you do not want.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action.  Knowing that while we are working for the greater good it is ok to find things that make us smile and laugh, we keep our eye on what it is we are striving to create.  When we see that our own joy allows us to better stand up for what we believe in, we grow stronger, we have a clearer understanding of what it is we are fighting for, and 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 sixtieth 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: Working through Negative Emotions

I was recently delivered a rather serious blow to my ego.

Without getting into too much detail, I ran across something online that made me question my worth, my value as an individual, and my ability to do good work.  It was early in the day, and set the tone for the rest of my day, leaving me feeling discontent, nervous, unhappy, and otherwise uncertain.

I spent a day feeling ill, unhappy, and discontent.  Worse, the general news of the world just added to that feeling once again.  I could not find any consolation; I was doing my best not to react even more negatively than I was.

But much later, when I had a chance to reanalyze and calm down, I got a new perspective.  Maybe this thing that made me feel this way was either not the worst-case scenario I feared it could be, and/or maybe this was actually another wake-up call from the Universe.

I believe that there are omens, signs and portents that we often miss.  I can see them for what they are, from time to time, and I go with it.  For example, a couple of recent events, signs and omens, prompted me to stop waiting for…whatever, and visit my doctor for my overdue physical.  I want to be healthy in every way, and I know there is room here for improvement.  So I went, and am in the process of making some necessary changes.

As I am working on becoming more aware overall, I am seeing that signs have become a bit more visible to me.  I can see that certain things happen to show me that I need to redirect my focus or shift my thoughts, and take new and different paths sometimes.

This is where seeing this unusual situation for possibility and positivity rather than negativity, I am in a better place to continue working on my conscious reality creation.  I can strive to get control over my emotions.

I frequently write about the fact that we have control of our own emotions.  While this is true, it often doesn’t feel so.  Things happen and we get upset by them; we read the news and suddenly we’re really  angry; somebody says something mean and we feel hurt; we trip on the sidewalk and feel embarrassed.  All of these are perfectly valid, and all of these are natural reactions and normal feelings.  Since I know I am not fond of feeling such, the question is, how long do I want to hold onto this negative feeling?

In the here and now there is an initial reaction.  From that reaction, we might look to the past (wow, why does this keep happening?) or ahead to the future (what am I going to do if that goes down?)  This will inevitably cause an emotional reaction, which can in turn assert dominance over us, and so begins a downward spiral.

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One of the reasons I am trying to focus more on my awareness of the here-and-now is to NOT be ruled by my emotions.  When I am asking myself How am I feeling? I immediately can see what my emotional state is in the here-and-now, and if it’s not something I want, I can decide what to do about it.  Being aware of my current thoughts and feelings allows me to better know my emotional state, and help me to be where I want to be if I am not currently there.

Yes, negative emotions can be VERY hard to overcome.  This is why so many people contend with depression.  Yoda may not have meant this to be about depression, but still, “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”  While depression will not be dominant “forever”, when you are coping with it, it certainly feels that way.

When you cope with depression, it’s even harder to get ahold of your emotional state, let alone take control over it.  Yet it is possible, it just takes any one or combination of different methods.  These can include, but are certainly not limited to a medication, use of a sun lamp, practicing meditation, more time in nature, disconnecting from the internet, a good laugh, a good cry, screaming in rage, exercising, smashing something with a hammer, taking time with a pet, time with a loved one, sensory deprivation; or some other reset.  Applying something that releases the negative energy and/or replacing it with positive energy can help tremendously.

I know that I am not alone in this.  Yes, sometimes it very much feels as if I am, but I know that I am not.  That helps me see I can turn to others who will understand, and together we can strive to use the here-and-now to overcome our upsets of the past and concerns for the future.

Please note – if you suffer from depression, whether temporary, clinical, great or small or what have you – I am here for you.  You are not alone.  We all have bad days, but I believe that we can work together to get through them, and enjoy the good and see positive possibilities.

A slight digression from my usual post, but important, I think.  Thank you.

Thank You for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me.

 

GOAL LOG – Week 7:

Diet:  Continuing with being mindful about what and how much I am eating.

Exercise: Three days of fencing.

Writing:  The three blogs got written, some work on my modern alchemist story.

Meditation:  I meditated 1 day last week for about 7 minutes.

Gratitude: I completely failed to write any of these last week.

 

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

Pathwalking 268

How clear is your vision?

This is the question I have been contending with for a while now.  It is, to some degree, due to a lack of clarity in my vision and my end goals that I find myself not achieving them as I most desire.

Part of my problem is that I sometimes want to hedge my bets.  I have a Plan A, a Plan B, and maybe even a Plan C.  The best part is, none of them are fully formed, either.

How does that work?  Well, I have a partially-formed notion of the path I want to walk.  This is Plan A, the main path I want to traverse.  Nearly parallel, though, I am also jumping from time to time to a different path or two, Plans B and C.  So rather than traverse one path and see where it is going, I am trying to travel along two or three.

It’s important that I pause and add some specificity here.  Yes, you can be on more than one path at a time when the goal at the end of the path differs with little difficulty.  I can be on one path with regards to career and another with regards to relationships, and not have the same difficulties.  Of course they can intersect and even parallel, but the difference in result does not lessen either’s clarity.

Is it possible to take two or three paths to the same place at a time?  Of course not.  Yes, you can often move along more than one road to get from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’.  They might even cross one another or intersect from time to time.  But it is impossible to travel on an eight-lane interstate freeway at seventy miles per hour while simultaneously rolling down a two-lane residential road at thirty-five with traffic lights every couple miles.

This is part of the problem in trying to negotiate more than one path towards similar goals at the same time.  Let’s look at my specific issue, being career.  As I have been discussing in my Crossing the Bridges posts, I have two distinct worlds I want to work in full-time when it comes to my writing.  One is the world of fiction, where I create and share my sci-fi, fantasy and other works.  The other is this stuff, Pathwalking, Positivity and my self-help philosophy stuff.

In trying to reconcile my two different worlds to a singular vision, I began to digress.  Rather than just looking at ways to expand and promote my writing, I started to consider how I might go about coaching.  Part of why I have begun to work on Pathwalking in Practice is to create something I can give instruction in to more people.

As I have been considering creating a coaching practice of some sort in order to share Pathwalking, I started to shift my focus towards steps I might need to take to get certified as a coach.  Classes, study so that I can do professional life and corporate coaching, and getting necessary certifications and recognition.

Not so long ago I began to receive corporate/life coaching.  I determined this was a step towards helping me work out just how to walk the path I want to the career I want.  One thing she pointed out to me was this – all we have talked about since we began to work together was my desire to write professionally.  Never before had I mentioned a desire to go into coaching.  Did I really want to take the steps involved, and was this really what I am after?

Almost instantly, I realized that, no, this was to some degree me hedging my bets.  I am unable to trust in and fully embrace and believe in my vision of myself as a best-selling author, and from there an inspirational speaker.  I lack the necessary clarity to realize my goal.

This is why clarity of vision is important.  This is why I have succeeded at manifesting my dreams and consciously creating my reality.  I was clear on the end result, I had a clear vision, and it came into being.  There was no question in my mind what the end goal was, and I got onto the path fully aware of where I intended it to end.  I will heal completely; I will replace my dying car; I will get that girl; and so forth.

The vision I need to place in my head, and more importantly KEEP in my head, is what I want at the end.  In this case, for this path, it’s this: I want to be a best-selling author.  From there, I want to sell screen rights to my work, and/or start creating movies and TV.  Alongside these, I want to become a public speaker on creating inspirational empowerment and conscious reality creation.

The other important point of clarity I need to work on is this: I cannot view this end goal as ahead of me, as down the line, as coming soon.  I need to see it as HERE AND NOW.  I need to keep this goal in mind as part of my present, not as my future.  So long as I keep seeing it as before me or coming up or eventually or even soon, that sends a definite message to the Universe.  I need to believe and feel this as if it is already my life, in order to truly draw it to me.

As a step towards adding greater clarity in my process, I am adding a fourth question to my daily awareness questions.  Joining How am I? and What am I thinking? and How am I feeling? I am adding Am I thinking about things ahead of me, or in the now?  This is yet another awareness checker, in order to better know my own mind, so that I can work on consciously creating the reality I most desire.

There are days this is more challenging than others.  But having clarity of purpose goes a very long ways towards building the life I want for myself, manifesting my dreams, and truly walking paths that I have chosen.

Are you clear on the goals of your life paths?

 

This is the two-hundred sixty-eighth 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.

Tell Congress to Act on Our Behalf

 

Are you concerned about the actions President Trump is taking?  Do you worry about his possible conflicts of interest, and his ties to Russia, and their hacking of our electoral system?  Are you worried about the apparent instability of President Trump, and his unpredictability, utter lack of tact and decorum, and total disregard of protocol?  Are you concerned about the choices he’s made for his cabinet?

If you answered yes to ANY of these question – it is time to reach out to Congress, and demand they take action!  Call, e mail, write letters, do all of the above!  Remind them that they work for US, not the party and their special interests.  Only Congress can call for an investigation into the ethics and potential conflicts of interest.  Only Congress can either enact the 25th Amendment or begin impeachment proceedings.  Yet they have taken no actions, and thus far only have worked in pursuit of their limited agenda, not doing their job as a check and balance of our governmental power.  The longer they wait to do so the more Mr. Trump can corrupt, disrupt and defy our representative democracy, and erode our republic.

The time has come to remind Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, that they work for US.  We, the People.  The parties are not who they serve, the investors and financiers who fund their campaigns are not their true constituents – WE ARE.  Let’s inundate them with phone calls, e mails and letters reminding them that they serve US, not their self-interests, and we DEMAND that they do their JOBS, and act as a check and restore balance to our government.

Let’s do this!  Feel free to share this call to action.

Positivity: I am; we are

I am.

Sometimes that’s all it takes to find a positive.  Just acknowledging that I AM.

Life happens.  Whether I am having a good day or a bad day, the important part is that I am having a day.  I am here.  I am alive.  I am breathing.  I have possibilities for my present and my future, and I AM.

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It is tremendously easy to lose sight of this.  We get caught up in our own mundane issues, whether that involves family, friends, loved-ones, coworkers or what-have you.  Then we are faced with societal issues, bigotry, hatred, fear and negativity.  But through it all, here we are.  We are breathing.  We are alive.  We are full to overflowing with possibility.

The positivity of this is endless.  Every day is a new opportunity; every day is another day of new possibility.  Just recognizing that I AM, that I live, breathe, and function is so incredibly positive that it is staggering.

Why does this matter?  Because I matter.  Because you matter.  Because we are here, on this spinning globe, living these amazing lives where we can manifest virtually anything we can conceive of.  I know that sometimes that seems impossible, I know that in the face of societal fear and anger that might even seem selfish, but the truth is that it’s not.  Recognizing that I AM is one of the most powerful positivity generators available.

I believe that if more people acknowledged their own needs, their own lives, their own existence and the empowerment that comes of this, we’d all be living in less fear, negativity and uncertainty.

I have written about the positivity of this topic before, but it is so, so powerful that I think it’s worthwhile to write about it again.  How you follow the words I AM can be a major determination of your thought process, of your feelings, and from there of your actions.

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Yet more than that, just being aware that I am, no matter what follows it, is important.  It’s easy to feel like a statistic, like a cog in the machine, like we do not matter.  But we do.  It matters that we are here, whether today is a good day, a bad day or indifferent.  It matters that we are.  It is amazingly positive that we are.  There is no need to look any further than at the face that we are here.

I am alive.  I am endless possibility.  I am important.  I am.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action.  Knowing that I am, that I am alive, here and now, is an amazing generator of positivity.  When we see that just by being present, by acknowledging our individuality and our existence, we open up to endless possibility, and further 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 fifty-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.

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

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Crossing the Bridges: Living in the Here & Now

I believe that the key to happiness is living in the now.

This is particularly challenging, because our society is rather fond of living in the then and living for tomorrow.

I have goals and aspirations.  One of the reasons I began this portion of my blog was to explore how to live and work in all the worlds I do.  I need to cross between separate aspects of my life, different forms of writing, my social life and my professional life and so forth, despite them all being a part of the overall greater whole.

One of the greater challenges in this process, though, is my perception of time.  It is imperative that I do better with living in the here-and-now, rather than considering past matters or focusing on the future.

I have determined that there are two things I want from my life.  I want to write, and see my novels become best sellers and get turned into TV shows and movies.  Tall order, but I think it’s not outside of the realm of possibility.  I want to take Pathwalking out of the blog, and turn it into a coaching practice, and help others find and live their own empowerment, choosing their own destinies.

One of the biggest problems with these goals is where I see them.  I know full well that I see them ahead, in time, eventually, or down the line; but however you want to phrase it they are in the future.  They are something to be reached, something to be worked towards.

This.  Right.  Here.  This is the problem.  Every single book I have read or listened to about consciousness creating reality and manifestation states that you HAVE to see the things you want as already yours.  Right here, right now.  Not “will be” or “coming soon” or “down the line” or “in the future”, but here and now.  In the present tense.  You have to clearly picture them in your life right now, to give them clarity and power in order to consciously create them.

Time is utterly relative.  This is why it is imperative to envision your goal as if you have already achieved it.  Both philosophers and scientists have made this point, that time is an illusionary concept.  Much of how we perceive time is artificial, which can be hard to believe, but is true none-the-less.

When I recovered from my injuries after getting hit by a car crossing a street, I know that I didn’t see myself as healed “eventually”.  I didn’t see myself walking in the future, I saw it right then and there.  Yes, I was either bound to a wheelchair or using crutches or a walker, but nevertheless I saw myself as being whole, and everything working just like it had before.  Yes, there are some wicked scars remaining, titanium plates in my right shoulder, and parts of my right arm are still fairly numb – but to all intents and purposes I am fully healed, and can walk, run, and use my arm like before my injuries.

I refer to this example a lot because it was probably the most profound moment in my life.  I was severely broken, and when faced with a choice of curl up in a ball and hope for death, let it heal as it heals, or push and fight every step of the way, I chose to fight.  I was changed not just physically by that moment in my life, but mentally and emotionally, too.  I am striving to recapture the focus and absolute beliefs I held during that period in my life, because I know that I am capable of manifesting what I need, because I have done it before.

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I need to work on perceiving the bridges I cross not being between today and tomorrow, but all being in the same time.  I need to envision myself with bestselling novels.  I need to feel how it would feel to have an offer on the table for the screen rights to my work.  I need to imagine in detail teaching a class of Pathwalkers, and having people come to me to learn to better empower themselves.  I need to feel how it will feel to have the wealth and abundance this will bring me, and how it will feel to give large donations to charity, to be even more generous to friends and family, right now, as if this IS my life.

Overall I need to live more in the here-and-now.  Analyzing the past is not my biggest issue, I recognize that my past is past…it’s worrying about the future that is most challenging.  This is particularly convoluted these days, largely because of massive uncertainty in the American political climate.  I can’t do anything but protect those I love in the here-and-now, so I know that I need to be more thoroughly thinking, feeling and acting in the here-and-now.

How do I move my thoughts from tomorrow into today?  I need to be more aware of my self-talk.  I am checking in with myself several times a day with questions about How Am I? What am I thinking? and How am I feeling?  These came of Pathwalking in Practice, and are meant to make me more aware, right here and now.  I think I might need to add the question, Am I thinking about things ahead of me, or in the now?  Simple question, simple answer, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

Living in the now is imperative for finding empowerment, peace and happiness.  I cannot reclaim the past and I can’t live in tomorrow, so focusing on here and now allows me to simply BE.  The power of that is incredible, and I know from everything I have studied that in doing this, I will cross every bridge I need to in order to manifest the life I most want.

Thought.  Feeling.  Action.  Right here, right now…I can do almost anything I can imagine. Thank You for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me.

 

GOAL LOG – Week 6:

Diet:  Continuing with being mindful about what and how much I am eating.

Exercise: Two days of fencing and two days at the gym.

Writing:  The three blogs got written, I spent much of a snow day working on the sci-fi novel, and also worked on another story another day.

Meditation:  I meditated 3 days last week, never less than 6 minutes.

Gratitude: I wrote five things I was grateful for on three days this week.

 

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

Pathwalking 267

Why does anyone want to be wealthy?  What is wealth?

American society, at least, has long believed in the idea that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps, rise to the top and make yourself into a rich, successful individual if you just work hard enough.  Put your nose to the grindstone, work your ass off, and viola, you will be successful and rich.

Wealth, however, is a much broader topic.  Being wealthy is not achieved by counting the pennies in your pockets, it is much more than that.  Wealth is deeper, more involved than the simple idea of money, having vs not-having, and so on.

Our society puts far too much emphasis on how much money we each have.  This causes all kinds of problems for people, because money is a totally loaded topic.  For some, money is a good thing, and they see it as empowering and helpful.  For some, money is a bad thing, they see it as disempowering and hurtful.  Yet in order to do anything in this world, you have to have money for everything from the basics to the more advanced needs and wants we require.

Money is infuriating, because while it, in-and-of itself, is a neutral thing, people will use it for good and evil.  People will lord their money over those who do not have it, hoard it, and use it for their own greed to keep others down.  People will show incredible generosity, and give donations to worthy charities and people in need.  Most people use money to cover the basics, and with whatever they have beyond that to buy things that we hope will help us to be happy.

This is the biggest matter when it comes to money.  Happiness.  Money is often seen as the key to happiness.  If you have money, you will be happy because you can buy anything you want.  This, in turn, leads to the false belief that being rich and having plenty of money is being wealthy.  But the truth is, there is more to wealth than that.

What is wealth? From all that I have studied, wealth is abundance.  Abundance of not just material things like money and possessions, but also friends, health, loved ones, and awareness.  When you live in abundance, you are never wanting for companionship, love, freedom, or possibility.

Unfortunately, our society has problems with abundance.  We are constantly bombarded by messages of lack.  There is not enough to go around.  Money is scarce, jobs are scarce, your freedom is under attack because there is only so much to go around.  Why is that the message?  Because by keeping our society in a lack mentality, those in power believe this will keep them in power.  They offer to protect what we have, guard it jealously because there is little else to go around.  They convince us that because there is lack and not abundance, greed is acceptable.

This is the biggest lie in our society today.  Because of this lie, we are facing unprecedented levels of greed, of stinginess, but worse than that we have become more accepting of blatant acts of intolerance, cruelty, and indecency.  We see outright lies being told daily by our top government officials, and rather than call them out for it we analyze them, we track them, but we hardly hold anyone to be accountable.

It’s obvious why anyone wants wealth.  Is there anybody that does not want an abundance of good in their life?

So how do you attain wealth?  The key is abundance.  We need to think abundance, we need to feel abundance, we need to act abundant.  And of course, this is so, so much easier said than done.  Just to add insult to injury, it’s even harder given current circumstances.

It is important to note that wealth and abundance is NOT a selfish thing.  Having wealth, being abundant is not selfish.  In fact, the very definition of abundance is more than enough.  We frequently misrepresent the “wealthy” as selfish because we see these rich people hoarding their money, selfishly guarding what they have for themselves alone, and denying empowerment to others.  That is NOT truly wealth nor abundance.  The truly wealthy know there is more than enough to go around, and they share and spread abundance.

How does one apply abundance to Pathwalking in Practice?  This is particularly challenging.  In especial if you have bills to pay, debts owed, or are in any other way feeling lack.  What’s more, this is something that it might feel REALLY selfish to consider, given the state of the world today.  However, if we do not care for ourselves, how can we do any good for anyone else?

To think and feel abundance, you have to convince yourself that your life IS abundant.  You cannot see it in the future, you have to see it RIGHT NOW.  I think the best practice one can do to try and manifest more abundance, and to think and feel abundance, is to write out, first thing in the morning, five to ten times, an affirmation, such as I HAVE ENDLESS ABUNDANCE or I AM WEALTHY or I AM WEALTHY AND ABUNDANT.  Then, write it out again just before going to bed.

I know that this might stretch credulity, and it might feel like an outright lie.  But every single book I have read or listened to on the subject of consciousness creating reality, or the Law of Attraction, or just about any other self-help advice suggests something like this.  We have to alter our thinking to alter our feeling to allow us better actions to manifest the world we want.  It might not be easy, but is anything worth having ever easy?

Do you want to be wealthy?

 

This is the two-hundred sixty-seventh 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: Working Together for the Greater Good

People are coming together to help one another.

In the face of difficult times, massive uncertainty, and some scary people assuming power, people are coming together to work with one another to show the world that we will not be intimidated.

Whether the topic is education, science, the environment, awful business practices, general politics, LGBTQ rights, separation of church and state or what-have-you, people are coming together like never before to stand up for the things they believe in.  They are striving to change the conversation, and to make our world a better place.

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We are seeing people taking a stand for more inclusion, for protecting our planet from those who do not care if they poison our air and water, for not discriminating based on race, sexual orientation, gender, religion or other differences, for affordable health care and the education of our children, and more.  We are seeing people trying to build a better world rather than tear down what we have with no plan to create anything that’s better.

There are powerful forces wanting to divide us all.  They want to make sure only a small group of people have power, wealth and influence, rather than spreading it to the masses.  They have convinced many people that they will make their lives better, despite the only work they do benefiting a narrow, heavily biased and self-serving group.  Snake-oil salesmen playing on the fears of the masses to convince them they will help, when most of the actions they intend to take will make their constituents’ situations even worse.

Rather than let them remain dominant, people are changing the conversation, and working to reach out to more and more groups, striving to work together to use inclusion, positive forces rather than negative to change the world for the better.  People are taking actions as never before and participating in our system to improve it, to speak up and not allow the leadership to run all over us without being accountable.  The positivity of these actions is incredible.

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We are seeing that coming together to change the conversation and to help one another builds new bridges, opens new avenues of opportunity, and shows the people who would prefer us under their boots that we will not be doormats.  We are coming together as never before to spread hope and overwhelm fear, and that is amazing positivity.

Finding positivity is not hard, but it does require action.  Knowing that people are working together to stand up for equality, freedom and other things that improve the world, we can take heart that we can change the conversation and work to better all of our lives.  When we feel the positivity that comes from all the energy of so many working together to better our world, we each can 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 fifty-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.

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

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Crossing the Bridges: Health

Like many things in life, health comes in three forms.  Physical, mental, and spiritual.

It is extremely important that there be balance between these forms.  We frequently do not recognize this, and the price we pay is amazingly high.  As I am striving to create the life I most want, I need to take more time in addressing these.

Let’s start with the one I have down, I believe, the best.  Spiritual.  My spiritual health is good.  I know who I am, I know where my faith and beliefs lie.  If you read Pathwalking, you have gotten a pretty good look at my philosophy, and my belief that consciousness creates reality.  Certainly there is room for improvement…there is always room for improvement.  But this is the place I feel most confident, and this is where I think I have the best handle on myself.

This brings me to physical.  If you know me, you know that I am overweight.  You don’t develop a gut like mine without years of work.  I fluctuate between pretty heavy and obese, and I have been struggling with this pretty much my whole life.  Beyond this my cholesterol has been historically high, and heart disease runs in my family.

I am active.  I walk a lot, I fence at least once if not more times a week.  I work to get to the gym, where I do cardio and weight lifting.  I am pretty damned strong, flexible, dexterous, and my endurance is pretty high.

But I still eat larger portions than I should, and I still consume too many things that are not tremendously good for me.  Too much bread, salt, sugar and more.  I am constantly working to improve upon this part.

One of the issues here is my mental health.  My mental health is the matter that causes many of my issues both physically and spiritually.

I have suffered from clinical depression for much of my life.  I have been through therapy, I have taken Prozac, I have worked hard to cope with this and to not let it dictate my life.   Further, I have some anger issues.  No one ever gets hurt, but in my youth I punched a few walls, and I used to get pretty ragey on the road, which has begun to creep back into my being over the past couple years.

I am well aware that these are linked together.

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This is, of course, a vicious circle.  I get depressed, I eat, I get annoyed with my body, I get depressed, I eat, I get annoyed with my body, I eat, I get depressed…ad nausea.  To combat this, I have worked on my spiritual health.  I have developed my philosophy to help me better understand the notion that consciousness creates reality, and from there to work on manifesting more things I want for my life.

For some time I was able to avoid depression.  I was in a much better space overall, and I lost weight and I got healthy spiritually and mentally.  I saw a great many positive changes, and I even began to create Pathwalking from this.

Lately my mental health has been less stellar.  Why?  Two primary reasons.  One – the season.  It is winter.  Grey skies and cold generally make me feel down.  It is what it is, and so long as I live in the Northeastern US, this is how it will be.

Two – current events.  The political situation alternates between making me sad, making me angry, and scaring me.  The Executive branch is under the control of a narcissistic, mentally unstable billionaire, a white-supremacist hell-bent on destroying the social order and a bunch of sycophantic flunkies.  The Legislative branch is under the control of angry, self-righteous, self-interested idiots hell-bent on lining their pockets, reassuring those who contribute to their campaigns, and obliterating the middle class.  The Judicial branch is in danger of being hamstrung by the other two branches…so overall the republic is looking very, very sickly.

Because I cannot completely stick my head in the sand and ignore what is going on out there, this impacts my mental health…and like a domino, that in turn effects my physical and spiritual health.

What do I do to combat all of this?  This.  I write it all out.  I write Positivity to explore something good and positive in the face of so much negativity, and work on my mental health.  I write Pathwalking to work on my spiritual health, and check in with my conscious reality creation.  Crossing the Bridges checks in with the results of the processes, and my work to land in the place I most want to be.

I need to put more effort into my physical health.  I need to move past planning this and do better with taking action on that end.  Better physical health leads to better mental health and spiritual health.  It all ties together rather nicely.

I know this is a bit rambling, but I need to work through the process.  As always – Thank You for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me.

 

GOAL LOG – Week 5:

Diet:  Continuing with being mindful about what and how much I am eating, though a couple days went untracked.

Exercise: Two days of fencing, no gym.

Writing:  The three blogs got written, plus an extra blog post.

Meditation:  I did not meditate.  See mental health above.

Gratitude: I wrote five things I was grateful for on two days this week.

Clearly, I need to get back on track here.

 

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

Some thoughts on True Things

Truth.  Most of you reading this know it already.  Those who most need to see this, to fundamentally understand it for what it is, probably won’t.  And even if they did, they would likely dismiss this as liberal bullshit, or some such.

Mexicans are not pouring across our border as though the dam is broken.  Not by any stretch of the imagination.  Illegal immigrants are not everywhere, and taking your jobs!  This is simply a great big lie.

Refugees are not hiding secret ISIS operatives.  They are fleeing from destruction, murder and worse at the hands of ISIS and their ilk, they are not the problem.

Islam is not so different from Christianity.  The extremists are a very, very small percentage of what makes up Islamic practitioners, and are in no way representative of the religion.  Lumping them all together is a completely false equivalency.

There is no war on Christianity.  I repeat, there is NO war on Christianity.  What there has been is a broader understanding that we are NOT, nor have we ever been, a Christian nation.  That is why saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” has become prevalent – we are acknowledging there are others with different sensibilities out there.

Climate Change is a real, scientifically proven issue.  If we do nothing to arrest it or otherwise impact it, the planet will become increasingly toxic to us, and we will find it harder and harder to survive.  This is not some liberal lie to increase unnecessary regulations, it is the truth about how we have artificially effected the planet since the industrial revolution.

Non-straight people are no threat to anyone.  Sexual orientation and gender identification do not make a person good or bad.  These identifiers are harmful to none, and anyone who identifies as queer, gay, bi, transgendered or what-have-you should not be subject to discrimination on the basis of that.  Period.

President Trump is dangerous to the world order.  He will not make America great again, he will make us a third rate power.  He will make us a laughing-stock, a has-been, an also-ran.  We are in danger of losing our sovereignty over his outright lies and disregard for protocol, tact, and civility.

America is NOT a White nation.  We never were, we never will be.  We are a melting pot of diversity, or at least that’s what we should be.  We have every race, creed, color, religion, and so on represented in our national identity.  And remember, with the exception of the Native American tribes, we are ALL immigrants here.

Civility, kindness, compassion, understanding…what happened?  When did it become ok to be an asshole?  When did we let go of loving our neighbors, looking out for our brothers and sisters, and trying to help one another?  This is not what we should ever be about.  We should be trying to help each other be better people, not divide ourselves so that a small group of people can maintain a choke hold on power.

Consider that.  All of this is the truth.