Practice What You Preach

Do you find yourself being critical of other people's actions? Do you find yourself wishing people were different? Do you find yourself wishing the world was different? Maybe you think people should be nicer to each other. Maybe you think people should worry less about others and focus on themselves. Maybe you think people should be nicer to each other. Have you tried doing the things that you think other people should be doing or do you just find it easier to judge others rather than change your own behavior? We can't change anyone but ourselves so when we see things that we would like to change about others, we can only change that within ourselves.

Maybe you hate to see people litter and you hate seeing trash all around you all time. It's easy to sit around and complain about people who litter and it's easy to not litter ourselves. Have we tried going out and picking up some trash ourselves? You might be thinking... but if people wouldn't litter, we wouldn't have to pick up their trash, it shouldn't be our responsibility to pick up their trash, they should just stop littering. You are correct but also wrong. In a perfect world no one would litter, and no one would ever have to pick trash up that someone else threw on the ground. The issue is, we don't live in a perfect world, we live in a world where people litter, a world where people only think about themselves and don't care about anyone around them. We cannot change other people's behavior no matter how much we complain about them or judge them. We are forced to live in the world that we were born into. 

Pick up some trash, it doesn't even have to take up a lot of your time and it doesn't have to be a lot of effort. If you are outside walking somewhere and you see a piece of trash, simply bend over and pick it up and throw it in the very next garbage bin you come upon. It takes minimal effort to make the world a nicer place, to make the world cleaner, and to live in less garbage. Next time you are outside in a public space, look around you for trash and try to see if anyone is picking it up. When is the last time you picked up a piece of trash yourself? If we all would just pick up a piece of trash here and there instead of just complaining about the people that are littering, there wouldn't be any trash around.

Do you think that people are mean and rude and inconsiderate of others? Have you tried being nice and polite and considerate to other people? That doesn't just mean the people that are nice to you but everyone with whom you encounter. It's so easy to complain about other people being mean and not making any effort to be nice yourself. If we just complain and don't make the effort to be nice to people, we are in fact one of them. By simply being nice to other people we are able to brighten people's days and in turn make them nicer people. It doesn't take much effort, a smile to those who look in your direction, giving someone a hand who needs it, and simply asking someone how their day is, can all go a long way. Kindness can be spread but if all we are doing is complaining that no one is nice we are part of the problem. 

Are you part of a religion that preaches Love, kindness, and acceptance? Do you yourself practice those virtues or are you too busy just making sure other people are virtuous? Are you the type of person who is always worried about the sins of other people, all the while ignoring every sin that you commit? Do you complain about the corporation and billionaires hoarding all the wealth and yet you won't even give a nickel to a beggar on the street. Most of us aren't even willing to look a beggar in the eye and acknowledge their existence within the human race. We complain about those in power being greedy and money hungry while we ourselves desperately cling to every penny we have, always wanting more and never being satisfied with what we have. 

Hypocrisy is abundant in our world. So many of us are more worried about the thoughts, beliefs, and actions of other people all the while ignoring that we are doing the same things that we are complaining about. We accuse people of being selfish while ignoring our very own narcissist traits. We accuse people of being evil while refusing to look at the suffering we cause other people. We accuse people of being "no good criminals who are a drain on society" while speeding, running red lights, and drinking or smoking weed while driving. It seems to be ok when we break laws, but not when those "no-good criminals" do. We accuse people of being "lazy" and "not wanting to work" while not wanting them to earn a living wage or have access to any form of assistance. 

We say we Love our veterans and yet we don't care that roughly one third of the homeless are in fact veterans. We claim to be patriotic and Love America while yelling at anyone who doesn't speak English to "go back where they came from" when anyone in America who isn't Native American is in fact from somewhere else. All of our ancestors came to America from another country. Anytime anyone who isn't Native American tells someone to "go back to where they came from" they are literally saying that to their very own ancestors which in turn means they are saying it to themselves. 

We have become a society who is focused on shaming other people while refusing to look at our own actions. As soon as an altercation with another person takes place, we pull out our phones and record to blast all over social media to get everyone to side with us and prove that we were right. Meanwhile nothing gets accomplished, and no one ever learns conflict resolution. We are a society that has lost the ability of conflict resolution. We just blame, shame, and ignore instead of taking the time to hear the other persons perspective. We have no reason to ever listen to anyone when we are always right and are never wrong. The other person is always the one who is wrong and therefore we never have to look at ourselves. Never realizing that the other person feels exactly the same way, in their eyes they are in the right and you are in the wrong and you will never be able to convince them otherwise. 

Conflict resolution is the ability of both sides of a disagreement to listen to each other, make an attempt to understand the other persons perspective, and work together to form an outcome that works for both parties. If no comprise can be made, you simply agree to disagree and part ways with no hard feelings on either side, since you both put forth an effort. Next time someone offends you, you could try talking to them instead of pulling out your phone to shame them. If we would all practice what we preach a little more and worried a little less about what other people were doing, we would all be a little more content with life and be all the happier for it. We are all humans, and we are all in this together, we accomplish absolutely nothing by fighting with each other, we need to learn how to work together to create a more peaceful society. We all need to do our part and that can only start with you. Love and Peace! 

A True Artist Puts Their Words into Action!

Trust The Universe

If you are here reading this, you have been taken care of by the universe. You may not agree with how the universe has taken care of you, and you may not like how the universe has taken care of you. Nonetheless, you have been taken care of by the universe. You are here, you are alive, and you didn't have to do anything to have that happen. The universe has always taken care of you, and it always will. You have never had to do anything, and you never will. In fact, there is nothing you could do to change the universes plans for you. 

Can you go back in time and not be born? Can you change what family you were born into? Can you change what part of the world you were born in? Can you change what religion you were born into? Can you change what body you were born into? Can you change how people treat you or what they do to you? What exactly can you change?

You are here for a reason; you have a purpose within this universe. You don't need to know what that reason is, in order to acknowledge it and accept it. You wouldn't be here unless you were meant to be, plain and simple. No one exists who wasn't meant to. You are here because the universe wants you to be here. Since the universe wants you here and you can't do anything about it, there is also nothing that you need to do. 

⁷When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; “I need do nothing.” (ACIM, T-18.VII.5:7)

There is nothing that you need to do and there is nothing that you can do. It is only the false belief that you can if fact do anything that creates all of your misery and suffering. 

When nothing is done, Nothing is left undone - Tao Te Ching Chapter 48

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? - Matthew 6:30 Holy Bible

Whether you believe in God or not makes no difference. If you believe in God, then give your trust to him and let go. If you don't believe in God, then give your trust to the universe and let go. Love and Peace!

Answers

We all seek answers. There are some pretty basic universal questions that we all ask. Why are we here? What is the purpose of it all? What is my individual purpose? Is there a God? If there is a God, who or what is God? Where did we come from? Where will we end up? What happens when we die? Who am I? Why do I exist? Why does anything exist? How did we get here?

We also have more individualized and personalized questions that we seek answers to. Will I ever be rich? Will I ever be happy? Will I get what I want? Will anyone ever Love me? Will I always be alone? How do I get what I want? How do I get free from suffering? How do I attain enlightenment? How do I get rid of past karma? How do I get my sins resolved?

We seek out those with whom we believe have the answers to the questions we have. We look for our answers in religion, spirituality, the occult, science, philosophy, gurus, guides, experts, teachers, profits, leaders, and anything and everything that we believe might give us all the answers we seek. We all hope and believe that there must be something or someone out there with all the answers and if we are lucky enough, we might just be the one to find them. 

We will find whatever it is that we seek. Seek and ye shall find. When we find what we are seeking, we become content and stop seeking. When we stop seeking, we close ourselves off to everything else that surrounds us. We only find the answers to the questions we ask, never stopping to wonder about the answers to the questions that we never even thought of asking. If we believe that there are answers to the questions we seek, we must also belief that there are answers to questions we haven't yet asked, or questions that we refuse to ask.

We believe there must be some kind of universal truth within the universe that explains everything. A theory of everything. An answer that answers all of our questions. The flaw with that theory is the fact that we aren't considering all the questions we haven't asked. We only have the questions that we have asked, we only have our limited information. If there is a universal truth or a universal answer that applies to everything, we would only be able to know it by knowing the unknown along with the known. How do we know that in which we don't know, is the question we should be asking ourselves. We already know what we know. We already know what questions we have. We already know which of those questions have been answered. What we don't know is what we haven't even thought of asking. We have to know the unknown along with the known.

How do we know the unknown along with the known? We stop seeking, we stop asking questions. We stop trying to find answers. We simply observe. We acknowledge that the universe is a mysterious place. We acknowledge there are things which are known and there are things which are unknown. We acknowledge everything as it is and not as we want it to be in order to give us an answer. In simplest terms, we let go and we trust the universe. Love and Peace!

Basic Human Rights

What do all humans need to live? 1. Humans need to breathe oxygen. 2. Humans need to eat food. 3. Humans need to drink water. These are the minimum basic human needs. These are essential to human survival. There shouldn't be any starving humans, there shouldn't be any humans in need of clean drinking water, and there shouldn't be any humans who don't have clean air to breath. Clean air, healthy food, and clean drinking water should be available to every human that is alive, and it should all be free. These three things should not be monetized, they should not be controlled by corporations and businesses. These three things should be provided by the government free of charge. These three things should not be part of the economic system in any way. 

This shouldn't even be a debate. This shouldn't even be a discussion. This should be the way it is. It is the way nature intended it to be. Greed is what warps the perception of this. If you are against this in anyway, you are saying that you do not agree that every human on earth should have access to these three things. If you do not think that every human in the world deserves these three things, you yourself are saying that you don't deserve them either. No one ever says this about themselves, we all think that we personally deserve these three things, just not "those people". We are all human, there is no "them" vs. "us". No one human deserves the right to live more than any other human. 

It doesn't matter if "they" don't believe in the same things. It doesn't matter if "they" worship the same God or are part of the same religion. It doesn't matter if "they" don't live their life in a way that you agree with. It doesn't matter how poor "they" are. It doesn't matter how "they" live their lives. We are all human and are all entitled to the right to live. We can all debate all other issues until our faces turn blue, but this should not be a debate. Are you willing to give up any of these three things? If the answer is no, then how can you expect anyone else to? How could you ever possibly ask anyone else to? It doesn't matter how "lazy" someone is. It doesn't matter if someone doesn't "contribute" to society in any way. We are all human and we all deserve the basic needs for survival.

Do we honestly believe that companies making billions of dollars is more important than being alive? Do we honestly believe that there are humans that don't deserve to have access to food simply because they are "poor", "lazy", don't have the same beliefs as we do, or live in a different part of the world? Do we honestly believe that this is how the world should be? Health should not be a sign of wealth. Being alive should not be a sign of wealth. Not starving should not be a sign of wealth. Not having clean drinking water should not be a sign of wealth. If people want to drive expensive cars, wear fancy clothes, live in mansions, and have superyachts, that can be their sign of wealth. The three essentials to being alive should not be tied to wealth in any way shape or form. 

If you disagree with this in any way, you are more than free to give up any one of these three things and see just how long you survive without them. For those of you who say that there isn't enough to go around. It only takes a miniscule amount of effort to find out just how much of these things go to waste every day in this world. Here I'll even link a couple sites for you to make it even easier. Companies would rather waste than give it away since they can't make money by giving it away. 

One third of all food produced is lost or wasted –around 1.3 billion tonnes of food –costing the global economy close to $940 billion each year.

Approximately 30% of the global water supply is lost each year due to leaks and inefficient usage, equating to around 2.1 trillion gallons of water wasted.

The three essentials to life should have never been allowed to be connected to currency. The issue is, they were long ago, before we were ever even born. We were literally born into this system. No human alive created this system. No human alive even knows anyone who was alive when this system was created. It was created a long, long time ago. We are born into it and just accept it. We have the power to change it, we have the power to separate the three essentials of life from the economy. The only way we can do it, is to talk about it, to work on solutions together on how to solve it. To acknowledge it and observe it for what it is. It's abundantly clear that the people making money of the current system won't want to change it so it's up to the rest of us. 

Can we change the system overnight? No. Will it happen in our lifetime? Probably not. But we can change it. We can make it so our grandchildren might be able to live in a world where they get to life with the three essentials of life and not have to spend their entire life just trying to figure out how to stay alive. When a person plants a tree, they don't plant it for themselves, they plant it for future generations. When we change the system, we don't change it for ourselves, we change it for future generations. We are too busy arguing over petty beliefs instead of working together to solve world hunger. World hunger will never be solved until we work together. We work together by listening to each other, by offering up solutions, by making changes, and by seeing us all as we are, which is human. Love and Peace!

Labels

As soon as something is labeled it is imprisoned. When something or someone is labeled, it restricts its ability to be anything other than its label. Our minds see the world dualistically where most everything is either one or the other. Light vs. dark, good vs. evil, and so on. Our minds have difficulty comprehending non-duality where something or someone can be both good and bad and not just one or the other. By labeling something as "bad" we no longer allow ourselves to see that thing as "good" at all, we simply see "bad". Bad simply cannot exist without good; they go together. They are in fact one and the same. 

14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” - Exodus 3:14

God cannot be labeled, God cannot be defined, God cannot be put into a box. God doesn't label itself; it simply says I AM. As soon as a label is put onto God, that label negates all "opposing" labels and therefore negates half of God, therefor God simply says I AM the I AM. Even giving God a name is labeling God. The word God means something different to every person. Many of us believe that we are worshipping the same God within the same religion, but we are biased in our perspective and belief. No two people worship the same God. I spoke of this topic in a three-part series in earlier posts. Linked here: God - Part One, God - Part Two, & God - Part Three.

We do the same thing to others in labeling them. We label someone as "cruel", and we can no longer see any niceness within them. We label someone as "selfish", and we can no longer see any selflessness within them. We label someone as a "man", and they are no longer allowed to have any "feminine" characteristics. We label someone as "old", and they are no longer allowed to have any childlike qualities. We label someone a "sinner", and we no longer see any good they do, only the "evil". We label someone as a "saint", and they can do no wrong in our eyes. If someone does something that offends us or that we don't agree with, we simply label them as "mean" or some other label and refuse to look any deeper. We write them off in our minds, but when we write someone off in the external world, we are ignoring that part within ourselves. Everyone in the external world is representative of an internal aspect within us.  

Think of it in this way, most of us dream while we sleep, whether we remember our dreams or not is irrelevant. When we dream, we dream of other people, could be people we know or have met, or it could be people that we aren't even aware of. Those people in our dreams represent an aspect within ourselves in which our unconscious is trying to show us. The majority of us just pass our dreams off as non-sense when in reality, our dreams can be a bridge to a deeper understanding of ourselves. What motivates us, what drives us, and why we do what we do. When we dream of people, they are a projection of our mind. The people in our dreams aren't the actual manifestation of that person physically into our mind. Could you imagine if we were all being physically transported into each other's minds every night, pure chaos.

Our waking life works in the same way our dream life works. In waking life, sometimes people appear physically but more often than not, they appear within our thoughts or our mind the same as in dreams. People within our waking life appear in order to show us aspects within ourselves just the same as in dreaming life. When we dismiss our dreams, we miss out on allowing ourselves to grow, evolve, and learn more about ourselves. When we dismiss others in our waking life, we are ignoring those parts of ourselves in which those people remind us of that we don't like. If we have some cruelty within us but claim to be nice, caring, and good people, we are likely to refuse to acknowledge the cruelty within. When someone appears in our life as cruel, we simply ignore them and write them off in order to not be forced to acknowledge the cruelty within ourselves. 

When we label another, we become justified in writing them off within our minds. It is no longer about not being willing to look at that aspect within us, but simply putting the blame on them feeling justified about it. If we have no cruelty within us, then witnessing another who is cruel they would have no effect on us whatsoever, it is only when we have cruelty within, that we judge the cruelty in others. When we interact with others who remind us of the qualities within ourselves that we like and that we are willing to look at, we want to keep them around and we can't seem to get enough of them.

We all imprison ourselves by labeling ourselves. We call ourselves "stupid" and can no longer see anything intelligent we do that proves otherwise. We call ourselves "moral" and "just" and fail to see the cruelty and oppression we place on others. We call ourselves "poor" and are blind to how wealthy we really are. We call ourselves "fair" and "impartial" and refuse to acknowledge just how biased we really are. We believe that we are "right" which means anyone who doesn't agree with us is "wrong". We fail to see that we are both sides and neither side on all of the labels. We wouldn't know we were "stupid" unless we were smart. We wouldn't know we were "moral" and "just" unless we were capable of cruelty and oppression. We wouldn't have a concept of "poor" unless we were wealthy. We wouldn't have any comprehension of being "fair" and "impartial" unless we were already biased. We would be incapable to perceive being "right" unless we were wrong. 

For one day, pay attention to how often you label people, including yourself throughout your day. Our minds do it all the time, most of which we are unaware of. Someone cuts you off while you're driving and your mind thinks something along the lines of "what an asshole", that's a label. Would you change your opinion if you discovered it was a nun rushing to be at the bedside of a dying priest who devoted his life to the betterment of humanity? Would you still think they were an asshole? By calling them an asshole, you no longer allow yourself to see anything other than an asshole. We make a mistake and think to ourselves "I'm so stupid" or "I'm such a screwup" and don't allow ourselves to see any accomplishments we achieved. 

How many of us have thoughts about ourselves that seem to just go on repeat all day like a broken record? "I'm not good enough", "no one likes me", "I'm so stupid", "I can't do anything right", "I'm such an asshole". These are all ways that we label ourselves. We also have the repeating labels about others too that seem to go on without end. For one day just be aware of these labels. You don't have to do anything about them. You don't have to stop them or change them. You don't have to feel bad about having them, since we all have them. You don't have to do anything. Just be aware of them, that is all. Love and Peace!

How do we know the light? By knowing the darkness. How do we know ourselves? By knowing others. How do we know life? By knowing death.