Exploring Life

10/31/19 The secret to prayer is not to focus on what you lack, but rather to focus on what you already have. Prayer isn't meant for begging God to have something done for you. It is meant as a way to exercise our faith and to show us with man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.  Prayer should not be seen as "I don't have, and I need." It should be seen as "Thank you, God that what I ask is what I already have." It is the belief that you have already received it. We don't enter prayer from a place of lack, we enter into prayer from a place of I'm already wholeness. Even though I don't see it physically in my life, I act as if it is here in the present, and I doubt not one bit of that belief. Jesus said even if we had faith as small as a mustard seed, we could tell that mountain to move and it would move. Again, prayer is an exercise of faith.  Trusting that what we lay before God's feet is already answered. So next time

10/22/19 There are a lot of times when there will be a push and pull in different areas of your life. This is nothing new. The universe has been doing this for billions of years.  A star in space is born, then it dies. The moon's gravitational pull causes waves to push and to pull. People from all over enter your life and soon after leave you with only a memory. There is order in the universe and balance. Once something goes, another comes in. Once a forest burns down, another one regrows.  The key to happiness is not finding any solace on what is temporary and changing, but to find the peace within to carry you through.  Then, no matter what the outer condition is that surrounds your life, the peace within will sustain through every period of life.

10/20/19 A lot of people can't believe I turned down MTV when they requested the copyright of the video. They say, "You could've been even more big!" The thing is, I was only around 16 years old. I didn't even know what career I wanted to pursue at that point. Yeah, I knew I loved storytelling and making YouTube sketches for my Spanish classes, but at that age, I didn't come to the conclusion that I would pursue acting until later on.  Before that vine went viral, I was very much an introverted extrovert. Yes, I loved talking to people and meeting new people, but I had to have my alone time. I often found myself reading books or playing video games in the comfort of my own home, or going on long hikes alone. Growing up, I wasn't that person who was always hanging out with someone all the time. Yes, maybe on the weekends from time to time, but most of my high school years, I spent my time doing what I loved and was content with that. A few months before I

10/20/19 For the longest time, I tried resisting things that I thought were a part of me, but I realized were really just thoughts that I unconsciously was identifying with.  Once I became the awareness behind these thoughts, they no longer became my identity, rather they became something that just passes by. Almost like a car going past your house. As fast as the car drives by my house (my mind) is as fast as it leaves my house. Once I discovered that I could be the awareness behind these thoughts, it allowed me to realize that I am not my thoughts. That might seem like not a big deal to some, but it was a huge deal because I finally found a proven way to release myself from unwanted thoughts as sure and sturdy as any formula that is tested and true.  Just as we can measure the gravitational pull of a planet with m*g1*g2/r^2 and we know it works, this formula for finding freedom from random unwanted thoughts works just as well.  Unwanted thought + becoming the awareness behind the tho

“Every thought is a building block in your developing destiny. A building block towards the good or towards evil. According to the nature of your daydreams, you are accumulating either gold or explosive material in your destiny."             - Das Buch der königlichen Kunst

So much in the world tries desperately to keep us unaware of how little time we have on this Earth before we go, unconscious to the reality of the condition of humanity. We are born, and we die. We live and we cease to live. We come and we go. No one gets out alive.  But the world also tries to convince you that your life now is meaningless and therefore not important. Your life is filled with importance, meaning and existence. You are not just your body, you are more than your body. You are pure energy, and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred. After you die, you will continue to live, and how you live now determines how you live after death. Though many people have their theories, ideologies, and beliefs on what life will be like after death, we can at least agree that all actions are weighted, and we should strive to be a good person in the world.  However, I encourage you to go further, to go deeper. I encourage you to wrestle with the meaning of life, to

Challenges come in many forms and in many packages. Some big, some small, some which you have no solution for, others you find one right away. However, when you can stop a challenge from becoming a problem in your mind, then you can stay practical, stay present, and find a solution faster than if you allow the problem to keep you in a miserable state of unease.  The greater part of the challenge is what your mind is doing and saying about your life at that moment, not the actual challenge itself. It's inevitable to have waves of challenges come our way, but what makes the difference between a state of misery or a state of bliss is how we handle these challenges when they come, and how we let them go once we move on.  The ego of each person clings to whatever negativity it can find. Once it clings to the bad, you then keep thinking so much about the bad that you must complain about it to someone, or else you feel as if you'll go mad if you don't. The ego keeps you in this cy

"The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know."          - Albert Einstein

It's not that you aren't friends anymore, it's that you were never truly friends in the first place. A real friend is real with you. They tell you what's on their mind.  They support you, they care for you, and they help you get back on track when you fall off. If someone cannot extend their hand in such a way, then they were never truly your friend in the first place. That's a "you benefitted me for a while, and now I'm good" relationship. Friends don't just give up on friends unless they weren't really your friend in the first place.  Someone that loses interest in you is very similar to someone who loses interest in a thing that provided them temporary pleasure and ego gratification. Your friendship was nothing more than what you could give them, and nothing less than what you couldn't give them. Granted there are people who are incompatible from the beginning, but nonetheless they try to make it work just to find out it won't a

The secret to life is seeing yourself in everyone, and seeing everyone in you.               - Ky Webb

Now, I'm aware that this post might tickle some feathers with some Christians, but hopefully it raises an interesting dialogue between those who share faith in God. I don't want people to assume that I look down on the Bible any less with this view that I'm about to share because that is definitely not the case. If anything, my view carries the same respect, if not more for who God is, but also for a respect for those who in the Bible shared many experiences with God and tried their hardest to explain it. If the Bible was proclaimed to be God, I would not be writing this right now, and since I do not view the Bible as God, but as a written account of those who shared experiences with God, I feel at peace writing this and learning and growing from other people's commentary on this post.  My point in writing this is to show you where I'm at right now, after wrestling for years with many passages in the Old Testament of the Bible. We know that the Bible is filled wi

We are all trying to seek balance in every area of our life. Not too much work, but then not too much time out with friends. Not too much eating, but then making sure we eat enough. Not being obsessed with ourselves, but then not being insecure about how we look.  The balance of life is a constant battle, and I would argue it's one of humanity's biggest struggles. Some may be great when it comes to balancing work with going out with friends, but then they suffer from balancing their alcohol intake. Just because you don't have trouble balancing what they have trouble balancing doesn't make them any less than you. It just means they're struggling to keep the balance in a different way than you are. Once you see everyone is fighting daily to keep that healthy balance in their lives, you gain massive sympathy for others and a deeper respect for mankind.

"Nonreaction to the ego in others is one of the most effective ways not only of going beyond ego in yourself but also of dissolving the collective human ego. But you can only be in a state of nonreaction if you can recognize someone’s behavior as coming from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction.  When you realize it’s not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were. By not reacting to the ego, you will often be able to bring out the sanity in others, which is the unconditioned consciousness as opposed to the conditioned. See if you can catch, that is to say, notice, the voice in the head, perhaps in the very moment it complains about something, and recognize it for what it is: the voice of the ego, no more than a conditioned mind-pattern, a thought.  Whenever you notice that voice, you will also realize that you are not the voice, but the one who is aware of it. In fact, you are the awareness that is aware of the voice. In the

"What is the role of the established religions in the arising of the new consciousness? Many people are already aware of the difference between spirituality and religion. They realize that having a belief system—a set of thoughts that you regard as the absolute truth—does not make you spiritual, no matter what the nature of those beliefs is. In fact, the more you make your thoughts (beliefs) into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself. Many “religious” people are stuck at that level. They equate truth with thought, and as they are completely identified with thought (their mind), they claim to be in sole possession of the truth in an unconscious attempt to protect their identity. They don’t realize the limitations of thought. Unless you believe (think) exactly as they do, you are wrong in their eyes, and in the not-too-distant past, they would have felt justified in killing you for that. And some still do, even now."       - Eckh

I used to really struggle with telling people no, so much so that there would be days when I did almost nothing for myself and most things for others. However, now say if someone invites me to something and I know I should not go, I will apologize that I cannot go and be okay with it. It took me the longest time to really believe it's not selfish to say no or to take care or myself first before taking care of others, but once I realized that, I've been able to accomplish so much more each day than I ever have before. Nowadays, I rarely if ever watch in excess Netflix or any other streaming websites, or watch movies or play video games. However, if I have the time, and it serves a valuable purpose that will either benefit a relationship or allow someone to feel loved by showing them quality time, then I will say yes because one of my goals in life is to make those around me feel loved and cared for.  But binge-watching shows right now does not serve towards my goals for myself,

Any new friendships are definitely more unstable than friendships that you've been investing in for years. It's kind of like a trial period. You don't know for sure if they're lifelong friends, so you go in with no expectations and just the thought of having a good time.  Then if they end up not having what you desire in a friendship, then you don't let them in your inner circle. It doesn't mean they're a bad person, or you're a bad person, it just means you value certain things over other things, and if they don't value what you value, then perhaps you keep a certain boundary up. Maybe they aren't reliable, and reliability is very important to you. Or maybe they're not trustworthy, or maybe your personalities just don't end up matching, or whatever else it is. There's no requirement when starting a friendship that you must always allow them into your inner circle and give them your time and priority. Anyone you let into your inner c

10/8/19 You reached a dangerous level of freedom when you don't need anyone or anything to be happy except for God.