breathing words

[Sash]

My flow of consciousness writing this morning. A bit refined but still raw.

 

California, here we go again. Another sleepless night. It is time for me to write on a night like this. I do enjoy the tempo of writing on a keyboard. It is, all things considered, a much faster writing process. There is a shorter time between what I think and what gets typed down, so that makes these free consciousness writing a lot more smooth.

I've tried to master the art of language as best as I can, but I obviously still have a lot more to learn about words and the best ways to use them. Words are like tools. It really depends on how you use them. Sometimes, there are complex points that are required just to make simple truths more evident. In that case, the skill of communication is an underrated one. If you could just reduce the amount of "latency" between something you are trying to say and something that you actually say, then that would make a whole world of a difference in the way that you carry yourself and present yourself to the world. I've always felt like keeping up an appearance has been a pretty big part of my life. I try to be the kind of person that I think people ought to be in this day and age. Curious. Optimistic. Healthy. Sober. I've tried, and failed, but I've also succeeded at times. My only regret is that most of the things that I really meant were heard by no one. Most of the time they were just ideas shelved away in some journal, never to be rediscovered again.

I think that all adolescents need time by themselves, especially early in the morning. If one has a penchant for writing, then they ought to write during those pre-dawn hours where it feels as though one's mind is just a bit closer to the heart of things. That's when the magic happens.

For example, right now. I'm really just typing away and not really knowing where anything is going to end up. But that's the fun of the whole thing right? It's like driving down a big stretch of country road that you've never been on before. It's a thrill in and of itself. Plus, there's no one on the road to bother you, not at 4:09 in the morning. It's just a clean empty road and the sun hasn't even come out yet, but the road and the mystery of what lies ahead is just so intriguing that you feel totally awake at the wheel. If you're not, even for a second, well, you might just lose your way.

I think that my night time writing is to be appreciated, but writing at dawn is a whole nother ball game. It prepares your creative mind for the rest of the day. Just blurting out your thoughts onto something tangible, something that is cohesive, it sets you up to think in the same fashion with whatever else you encounter for the rest of the day. You start to bend the rules that you set for yourself yesterday. You are forced to make your fingers churn out something new. You must be unpredictable on the keyboard so you can be spontaneous in life. There is not a single day in which this should not be experienced by everyone. You should be able to harness the power of your mind. You ought to make your mind your friend and follow it, knowing that it will be by your side and not against you, even when the going is the toughest. You ought to make yourself anew.

I've been writing for a long time now, and if you had to ask me how long, on a deeper level I would say I've been writing my whole life… and then some. I know that there is something primal in me that wants to convey a message to the world, in the hopes that it will inspire, invigorate, and heal much of the damage that we have caused and been victim to. A great deal of suffering stems from misunderstanding. Clarity of language could be a simple but effective antidote. I would argue that actually all suffering is just tangled up chains and chains of misunderstanding, all linking together to make you forget what the hell its all chaining up anyway.

I don't want to lose my life, but I do waste my essence. This is a problem for me. I have many addictions. I am not the pure saintly being I aspire to be. But the fact that I actually aspire to be that way shows me that I am, at least inevitably, worthy of it. Why would I set myself up for something I am not destined for? Why would I approach a door unless I know I can open it? It is the same thing with everything.

For example, soccer tryouts in high school. Maybe I wasn't going to the soccer tryout to join the team. Maybe I was going to the soccer tryout to realize that soccer wasn't my thing. Maybe I just had to realize that actually, there were many things I thought I was that I was really just pretending to be. And maybe all it took to be authentic was to just have a bit of faith. Maybe all it ever took was to just flow with life. To just let things come out unfiltered and raw, like fresh honey.

Pouring out of me are these words and these thoughts. Some of them are like the wannabe thoughts of someone I admire, someone I look up to. But that is what I have. I am a learner. A lot of the ideas I have have been borrowed. I don't necessarily wear them as my own opinions and ideas. I just see them as benchmarks. Benchmarks that really speak more about the perspective they were forged from than an actual metric to gauge how my life is going. You see, wisdom is wisdom only if it is yours. Real wisdom doesn't seek to be everywhere and all the time. Real wisdom has to be wooed. It has to be challenged to stand up to the test of deceit, and emerge victorious. That is the hallmark of truth. That which cannot not be. And that which is will always prevail over that which cannot be, simply because it is.

And now here I guess I'm just regurgitating some of those eastern philosophies, but really, these eastern philosophies are a part of me now, whether I like it or not. And I have to say that for the most part I do like it, because for the most part I have been seeking it. I am really just receiving what I have been seeking. I've sought wisdom, maybe not always consciously, but in the back of my mind always, there's been the question of what it means to live well. What does it mean to be righteous? What does it mean to be noble? Why should one aspire to these things other than it makes one feel pleased to do righteous and noble things? It's not to say that there aren't pleasures that come with doing the right thing, but I feel that truth should go beyond how it makes you feel. There isn’t that depth of understanding in me yet I guess. And for that I expect I will have to suffer. And I will suffer, continue to suffer, as I have done my whole life, living a lie that I never cared to question or challenge. I can't have that. Not for long, at least.

Truth is truth because no matter how hard you try you can't run from it, you can't manipulate it, you can't corrupt it, you can only depend on it. You can only look to it for compassion. You can only grow from it and feel relieved in the process. That is truth to me.

So, going on now. Let's talk about some simpler things. Let's talk about responsibilities. I was thinking today that I ought to focus more of my time on learning skills and building a kind of portfolio for myself as a virtual designer. I was thinking yesterday and today about all these different ways I could use my talent for curating learning, and I got to thinking about a way to make language learning a lot more engaging using the capabilities of VR and AR technology. These methods really do provide a lot of possibility in the way that humans will learn and develop themselves in the future, and I really hope that these possibilities are explored with the keen fascination and interest that they deserve, because human well-being will ultimately depend on how we see ourselves. It will depend on how we relate ourselves to the world we live in. To build a healthy society is to build it with inclusion in mind. The future ought to boast a culture of pure individuality. We ought to embrace our complex human selves, and go against the grain of dogma and tradition. We ought to live in a society totally devoid of judgement, where anybody is free to learn that which is most redeeming in the world. We just don't have that right now. We live in a world where it's expected that tomorrow will be just like yesterday, when really we should create a world that recognizes that every single moment is a new one. We ought to seek the highest, the most profound, and we should acknowledge that really, that's all we've been doing. All we have ever done is seeking something deep, something meaningful, something that restores a sense of humanity in oneself. Idealism is not naivete.

What is humanity, you ask? To me, humanity is about being totally engaged while being totally vulnerable. It is about living each and every moment to the best of your ability. And we consider this to be noble because we are like David only that we don't really know how big Goliath really is,. We just see a shadow of Goliath, we don't really see a physical, finite form that we can size up and prepare for. The unknown is our greatest bane and our greatest muse. All of life is really just geared seeing what the experience is of a limited being in a limitless universe. How do you respond to infinity? How do you respond to perceived finity? Do you cower and hide and cry, or do you choose to stand and put your best foot forward through it all? I really do think that politics and the core curriculum so to speak that comes with modern society, ought to amuse themselves just a bit more with these existential questions, because really, they make up the bedrock of life. Sure it's a lot of layers deep but that's precisely what makes it so foundational. And if you then choose to stand on that bedrock, then what kind of a life would you be choosing? A life aligned with truth of course. Unshakeable love. But I don't know that for sure. At least not yet. For now I just have my reason.

[Eternal Unity]

Read it all and loved it! 

"Humanity is about being totally engaged while being totally vulnerable" - Agreed. Like walking on a razor's edge.

Flow on, Breather of Words

[Sash]

I spoke with an astrologer last week. I had paid him $50 out of a genuine curiosity to see what he had to say. My intention was to listen to what he had to say while being as open-minded and yet as detached as possible. I'm realizing now how difficult that actually is.

Since that meeting, I've just been catching myself thinking about all of the things he said, and wondering if me focusing on what he had to say was actually making it more likely that those things would happen.

 

I feel like I had one of those eerie epiphanies yesterday where you suddenly feel like you're a lot older than you really are, almost like you've stepped into a new life. It's that feeling of not knowing what's ahead, but knowing that you don't want to look back.

I'm taking a poetry class this semester. There's this girl in my class. And I find myself feeling like I have to change for the class, for the girl, for this new life, for people. It's a distraction. It's illusion. I tell myself. Just focus on finding your voice.

[Sash]

At My Rope's End

Today's been rough. I hardly got enough sleep but a new energy is moving through me. I scrambled to withdraw money from my accounts, whatever left of it I had. For the entire afternoon, it was as if all the financial institutions I was a member of no longer saw me fit to do business with. I tried to transfer the few dollars I had around, just so that I could get 20 dollars to buy a used keyboard I was planning on reselling for maybe 15 dollars profit. I pull up to the drive-in ATM, the only one in my area that will take my card. Anxiously, I slide my Bank of America debit card into the ATM, hoping for relief. What I get instead is a rude beep. My debit card, containing more than 90% of my liquid assets, had just been eaten.

Furious, I slammed my hand against the steering wheel. I had finally reached my rope's end. My dreams, my hopes, my aspirations of abundance all threatened to unravel themselves in that moment. I felt my inner child yelling at me, telling me that this wasn't the life he had wanted for me. My ambition was thoroughly challenged today, and now I must respond.

I finally arrived at a decision, a decision that would redeem all of my life's experiences up until this point.

I had to commit to becoming a professional writer.

I must be bigger than I was today, and I know I can do that if I stand on the shoulders of my biggest strength: my ability to craft a story.

Life was telling me this for years. I didn't listen. The chaos and the friction I experienced today was my wake-up call. Luckily, I was attentive enough not to ignore it. 

My words must breathe. Or else, they will die.

And so begins my rude awakening into mastery.

Wish me luck.

Edited October 17, 2021 by Sash
improvement

[Sash]

I never felt like I belonged in society. I was the kid that looked at my culture and strongly disapproved of what I saw at every level. I just knew that we weren't living with wisdom in mind. Nobody around me was genuinely concerned about living a profound life, or making that possible for others. I had to scour the library and the internet and that journey has led me here today.

These past few years have been difficult. I got bombarded with the concept of self-actualization at a young age, though I was more than eager to lap up the knowledge and profound truth that was available to me as a high school student consuming Leo's content. But things have changed. I'm at a point now where I owe it to Leo and more importantly, to myself to stop consuming his content, because frankly what he is talking about is something I know I am not ready for (not counting his most recent upload ;). I have to be a creator.

I feel like I'm at a stage in my personal development where I am no longer capable of explaining my inner experience to others. I know this might sound like I'm bragging but there comes a point where you cannot explain what you're doing or what happens to you when you meditate to others, no matter how much you might want to just be able to box up the experiences and give them away.

My yoga is good. My meditation is improving. I have a strong devotion to the Hindu deity Shiva that is not logical but is 100% effective. My body is elastic like rubber. I am chaste like a nun and have no intention of breaking my celibacy anytime soon. My health is not bulletproof but I am making the necessary changes to my diet. I have a purpose that is multidimensional; it is a moment to moment purpose and a lifetime legacy: share the wisdom and information necessary to live a profound life. My big wordly dream that I want to see accomplished in the next 15 years? Creating a media outlet for the modern sage.

Society does not encourage you to grapple with existence and become larger than life. This is something that has to change, and that starts with culture. It starts with our media and the content that we consume. People need to feel safe enough to break away from society. There is the misconception that if you reject any part of society your only option is to take a flight to South Asia and lose all your social and professional credibility. This is dangerous black and white thinking. My family is terrified that I will do this. My message is that a sage's life does not have to be the cold life of a renunciate, although such a life is remarkably resistant to the adhesion of the plastic confetti glamour that gets paraded around in society today. Confetti is pretty while it's in the air but it sure is a bitch to clean up when it hits the ground. A sage can walk through all that shit and not a single piece of confetti will be found stuck to their person.

Being a sage means being a remarkably flexible being; performing acts of broad-minded compassion with a ruthless tenacity, a tenacity fueled by a cosmic love that surprise really exists. It means that you can wear a suit to work and chant Hare Krishna between zoom meetings. It is the loosening of all labels and all assumptions. It does not ask that you take up an oath and join a monastic order, only that you are true to yourself and reality as you know and don't know it. It is a life of zero distractions committed to the pursuit of truth and room must be carved out in society for the multidimensional individual in pursuit of such an endeavor.

Anything less is unacceptable.

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by Sash
we can only fall to the level of our standards