I think most would agree that love is the ultimate feeling. Whether it be romantic love, familial love, friendly love, self love, or spiritual love, when we experience love with each other or ourselves we feel whole and free, we feel accepted, understood, and appreciated. You could say that love or the fear of not having it is the underlying motivation behind all of our decisions. So how is it that I and many others were able to view it as simply just a chemical reaction, implying that it is some sort of illusion, an intangible fleeting experience?

I am here for you, I am here with you. I want to help because I believe together we can alleviate your pain, your suffering, your discomfort, your despair, your confusion, your apathy, your cynicism. I have experienced all of these things and sometimes still do, and it is my knowledge of what is true that helps me move past it, helps me process it in a way that I come out on the other side better than before.

I asked a friend to offer me some direction because she spoke to me during this writing session. I asked for a topic of discussion or question that I could attempt to answer and she said “Personality”. 

So personality, what is it? I can not say objectively what one thing is or isn’t, I can only make observations about what Mike has thought about it and what has been observed in other people’s thoughts or understanding about it. 

Personality as it tends to be defined from this perspective is a unique expression of an individual. That which demonstrates in some ways what the person feels or believes or thinks.

If only there were a way to convey it all at once. If only I could, with words, communicate to you exactly what it is you are, what your true origin or source is. I can employ words and concepts that will provide a loose idea of these concepts but in order for it to be known to the degree of true understanding and an abolition of current beliefs that contradict the sentiment, one must undertake a process of renunciation. Renunciation doesn’t apply solely to the forfeiting of material things but also to the abandonment of all ideas, concepts, and beliefs.

Every individual must realize responsibility for oneself and concomitantly the world as a whole. We must abandon all personal distractions and look within.

Fear is an involuntary mechanism ingrained in us through evolution. Those beings that never experienced the fear response were not the beings who survived. The ones who exhibited this response were the ones who went on to propagate, thus leaving only beings who experienced it. Fear was absolutely necessary before we were conscious aware beings. Meaning before we developed the ability to think, contemplate, or question.

How I understand it? Why do I believe it? Where does my faith come from? How do I know? 

I found a place of surrender. Whereas beforehand the thinker was always the doer. That’s the concise version, let’s see if we can unpack that. To understand that place of surrender I imagine a time where I “trusted in God” and let go. In the past when I felt a physical pain in my body that wasn’t necessarily caused by an external force, perhaps something like a pinch in a nerve, or the sensation of a pulled or damaged muscle, I would often recoil, in that I would have an immediate knee jerk reaction which was frequently accompanied by a thought and/or emotion of fear…

We all have adopted some kind of value system throughout our lives that have been determined by our interactions with our families, our peers, and our authority figures. I think what is necessary for a great change in our society is a great change in our value systems. If we change what we value, we will change how we act and react to situations. Currently we are living in a world where the system is based around competition. Although we promote togetherness and understanding and equality in our social systems, the institutions that influence how we operate on a professional level are completely run by competitive modalities.

If I were to talk to you, could you listen, could you hear? What would I say? What is there to say? What's the truth, what is a truth, that could be said, that could be understood. Well, for one, You're God. Yes, you. Me too. See the thing is that there is no real me or you, we are the same being, experiencing our self from different points of awareness. Different positions. We are the experiencer, if we are anything. You are the omnipotent, all knowing, all understanding awareness that is God.

Throughout my days I almost always consistently have in the back of my head the compulsion to write, which is just reflective of my compulsion to share. Share that which I've discovered, or remembered. I'm reaching a point where I'm becoming more comfortable with the idea of sharing myself or my life with the world. Making it available. Almost four years ago I came to a point in my life where a major change was necessary. I had been trying to be happy or find happiness virtually my entire existence.

What's stopping me from realizing my dreams? From becoming all that I am to be. Is there anything? Or is it all part of the process? Both? I can recall some times where I would reach a state of pure realization and I would be shown the sheer magnitude of that power and what it had the ability to change. In this state I would sometimes pull back because of the changes I would be shown that would happen if I were to embrace it. From this state I took back with me the statement, “We are all God but we are terrified of the responsibility”.

So what now? I've rolled truth again. I've thought about renaming it reflection, as if the name actually matters. But as I've mentioned before the word truth has become somewhat loaded for me. I've said it so many times to so many people and in so many writings that I've often had the reaction of seeing the arrogance of it as if to say “I KNOW the truth” is pretentious. But I do know it, there's no denying that anymore.

What is the truth today?

Does it ever change? No. The truth is that which is unchanging. The truth of each moment is something that can change. In this moment, I am sitting in half lotus on a cushion in front of a computer. So far today I awoke at approximately 830am. Before I got up I moved my body around a little bit, activating my muscles. I then turned my attention to the clipboard on my wall where I have written some things. I said in my head some mantras that were written there. “I am grateful for love, freedom, understanding, abundance, connection and creativity. Strength, health, and balance.”

I started this session with what some might call a prayer. Following my meditation I thought about what I am grateful for. I have noticed that I have been asking for things or situations or feelings I want rather than already being grateful for having them, implying in the very asking for them that I am lacking in them. I am grateful for freedom. I am grateful for love. I am grateful for truth. Desire is still a player in my day to day. Saying this is not to deny myself of what could be, but simply being aware of my current state so I can refine my state to accept and appreciate that which my higher self desires.

I am a series of patterns, patterns that change and evolve through experience.

I've been more diligent with my practice as of lately and as a result I've opened myself up to a state of vulnerability, a state that I used to fear, one I avoided consciously and subconsciously. These days I can embrace it, I can accept it, I can live in it and see it for what it is. Yesterday my mom showed me a picture that my aunt had sent to her, it was of me, my sister, and my father who passed last August. He was sitting down and holding us both, I was maybe 1 and my sister 2. It's a beautiful picture, I'm getting emotional just writing about it. I've noticed it's easier for me to accept sadness as my state than it is to accept joy, joy seems so fragile, something that can be lost and taken away so easily, so there's always a fear in being in it.

I intended to write something today whereas it is part of my schedule, but the great thing about being free to design my own schedule I can choose how to follow it. The schedule says create, so at first I started writing and I never got far before I started playing guitar. When I did write I began talking about awareness. All we are is an awareness, everyone of us. A conglomerate of awareness if you will. All of our senses could be perceived as separate awarenesses, then there is our thoughts and our emotions, and our inner sensations(although I suppose that could be categorized under the sense of touch).

In order to speak to my higher self, that is the ultimate awareness, I have to be silent and be in silence, I'm not saying that that is the only way but it does create a conducive environment to facilitate it.

So I want to bring light to another setback of mine that was keeping me from writing for so long and still does to some degree and that is my desire to come to conclusions, which is essentially the same thing as wanting everyone to understand. I just wrote a couple paragraphs of some things that ring true to me and upon reaching the end I realized that I hadn't really stated anything definitively or concluded about any one topic, it was just talking, ranting even, and a part of me was deterred from publishing it because again I wanted it to be effective, I wanted it to prove beyond reasonable doubt something that makes sense to me.

I want to put this simply without being carried away. I created this originally partly because I just wanted something similar to a journal where I can just work out my thoughts, just try to put down into words what makes sense to me and also I created this to tell everyone else what makes sense to me so everyone else can experience the freedom I enjoy. Over the past couple months since this website's creation I've made very little progress and I continue to realize it is because the desire I have for people to read and understand became the primary motive and writing the truth took a back seat, so whenever I would sit to write I would constantly be criticizing what I wrote and analyzing it to see if it could make sense to everyone.