Be Easy..

My best friend (who unfortunately killed himself a year ago) used to say "Be easy" all the time. I can't hear, see or think that statement without picturing my best friend's big, loving grin stretching from ear to ear. Yet, I don't know exactly what that saying means, so I looked up the word "easy" to try to make some sense of it.

By definition, "easy" means:

1. achieved without great effort; presenting few difficulties.
2. (of a period of time or way of life) free from worries or problems.

So telling someone to stay easy is a shorthand way of telling them to stay achieving without great effort and without getting in their own way. When someone keeps their mind free from worries or problems by appreciating the very things that they have in the here and now, it becomes much easier to achieve a sense of happiness without great effort, even when life presents them with unexpected challenges and difficulties.

Unity

This post is a text message reply to my best friend regarding a discussion we had previously had that day about time, numbers and beliefs. Wish I had all of our old text messages.. Anyone know someone in our gov that can help me get copies of all our old conversations? Hahaha (but seriously if you can)..


Words get in my way so much sometimes. But I gotta try. I kept re-reading my last text and had to rewrite it to clarify.

Time - it is all we've really got. Tonight I discovered that time is unity. In math, unity equals 1. The weird part is that without unity, there is no time. All you have then is 0. The genius who figured out how to make a computer understood the foundation of everything rests on 1. Where there is nothing, you have nothing, and 0 represents this. It is the circle of space that surrounds every something, so even within that 0, 1 it is accounted for. That means unity is all we really have; it ALL boils down to 1.

Like you said earlier, 9 represents both, as it is a 0 bound to a 1. It represents the reality that something cant exist without nothing, and nothing can exist without something. That probably makes little sense, if any at all, to most, but it makes complete sense to me!! It explains why there is binary embedded in the equations of the universe as much as why I haven't learned the lesson of happiness that Ive have been stuck on for years now. I have been waiting my whole life for people, things, and opportunities, instead of living it. This is very bad, because time is what life is made of, and to waste it is to waste the most preciuos gift we will ever be given. But NOW is the time for that to change. Now is all we really ever have, but we have to be present in the now to fully live in it.

What really blew my mind tonight is that I realized what you said is absolutely true: there are no numbers. There are no letters. 1 plus 1 does not equal 2. It only does because we made it do so. We only have such things to bring the unfathomableness of the universe down to a human scale. But in the absence of such a scale, the only absolute truth is love. Think about this: the limit of x as x approaches infinity is 1. That, my friend, is the most basic derivative in calculus, and it is the fundamental concept on which calculus is built. Likewise, the limit of ANY number not bound to x is 0.

While proving both of the above equations would take no less than a page of algebraic manipulations, the answer is that simple. But what does it mean? I think it simply means that when all the blanks are filled in and everything in existence is accounted for, all you have in the end is 1. All the numbers we have invented to describe the universe will never amount to anything, because at infinity, they are bound to nothing. Look it up for yourself: the derivative of x always equals 1, and the derivative of a constant (which numbers, including 1 are defined as) always equals 0. Let that sink in for a while.. While you do, ponder what x is, and why it always is equal to unity. X marks the spot...

Happiness is our purpose, but the real question is: how do you find happiness? What exactly IS happiness? A feeling? A state of being? A state of wanting? Given that feelings and wants can decieve us, my guess is that those two can be eliminated. If all paths lead to the truth, your answer will probably be different from mine, but as long as it is rooted in truth, you will find it. If it is rooted in a lie, then pursuing it will lead you to heartache, despair, guilt, anxiety, shame, fear and pain. Or worse..

Love can only be pure when it is a choice, because love that is not rooted in a conscious choice is not love at all. It is lust, which is rooted in our primal instincts. Acting out of primal instincts means that your body is controlling you and not vice-versa. We have free will, which is a choice that only we can choose for ourselves. It is, in fact, the most important choice we will ever choose for ourselves. It is with this choice that we gain consciousness, and only in consciousness can our love become pure. Conversely, we return to a primal state when we stop making it a choice, and in turn, our primal state will lead us to everywhere but where we want to be. We then start to chase the things we think we want, til we get them and realize they arent what we thought they would be. But then again, when your body controls your mind, few things are what you think and believe them to be..
 Mainly because you dont think, just act. Beliefs then serve only to justify those actions. The more you are having to justify, the further from truth you will find yourself.

Whenever you find yourself in darkness, remember that we are never truly alone; love connects us all through space and time, against ALL odds. It is what allows us to beat the odds. It is what makes life possible. Love IS God, because God IS love, and to let love into your life, you dont need to do anything more than to be open to it. And the only way to be open to it is make it a choice. The moment you reject love and close yourself off from it - that IS hell. Hell is where there is no love, genuine love that is, and you dont have to be dead to experience it..

Dream

Right before I closed my eyes, as I was laying in bed letting my mind drift into a quiet, calm, peaceful place, I saw this light at the end of the hallway through my half-open bedroom door. It was hard not to notice it, as there were no lights turned on upstairs, and the kids were gone and couldn't have undone that. It was a tiny, faint glow at first, but as it started coming towards me (to my horror), it grew larger and brighter.

It moved very slowly, and in a very steady manner, but it was without question getting bigger and brighter. Given the hallway was more or less pitch black, and there was no visible light source, this had me REALLY creeped out!! By the time the light reached my room, it was as powerful as a spotlight.

From the moment I noticed it, I froze and was too scared to move. But I could feel the fear melt way as it grew closer, and by the time it reached me and was SO bright that I was completely engulfed in light, all of my pain, sadness, grief, fear - ALL of it was gone. Completely GONE! All I could focus on was the light. No words, no thoughts, no anything - nothing. Just light. I can't explain it any other way.

I don't really remember falling asleep; I just remember waking up. I looked around until my eyes landed on my clock: 8:10 AM. I laid back down, closed my eyes, and then it all came flooding into my mind: the light, the calm and the weird dreams I woke up out of.

It was like a living kaleidoscope in my dream, where life was moving, twisting, contorting and dissolving into new shapes, colors and beings constantly. It's like I was watching life unfold at the speed of light! Almost like I had become light.. I had become the very center of the place from which it springs forth. Then I watched as pure light and all of it's many variations, from photon-like packets of wave energy to actual waves of energy, sprang forth from this singularity within me.

In this place, I could see the damage that had been done to the opening of my soul's inner light. Many things had tried to build a wall around my inner light's source, and the resulting blockage was what left me fighting in the dark and cold of the world, seemingly alone with few to none that I could trust. I couldn't let love in for want of a way to protect myself from it, and the result of this mindset was an ever-taller wall with an ever-increasing thickness around my inner light, making it harder and harder for me to access it. I knew what I had to do, and knew the only way to do it was to DO it.

I began to take the wall apart. I found a loose stone and pried it loose, then used it to carve away at the wall until, one by one, it had been nearly dismantled. I was down to my last stone when I felt how free I felt, how much easier it was to see as the light got brighter and brighter, and how much warmer it was without the wall blocking the heat from the abundant energy light source within.

I sat on the last stone, and smiled. It felt like heaven to have the light gently warm up my soul; the more that I smiled, the more that the light flooded out and poured from the singularity. I realized that my smile not only created more light, but almost seemed to be absorbing the light and becoming one with it. Like an oscillating electrical and magnetic field where electricity has been fully absorbed into a magnetic field as it moves through space and time to create electromagnetic radiation - I had become light. :)

As I looked at the dismantled rubble around me, I noticed that many of the stones had been put there by others, but I cemented them into my wall nonetheless. So much rubble lay beside me, yet I realized I had only two choices: to protect the ruins from being disturbed or use them to build a solid foundation on which I could rebuild my life.

I cleared the ground, started laying one stone after another to form several tightly interlocking rows, and proceeded to build a solid foundation from the very stones that once imprisoned my soul in darkness. After I finished, I sat and observed the beauty of the light that kept spilling out of the singularity just beyond where I sat in the seat of my consciousness. It was all I needed to be content. I didn't need shelter - there is no rain inside. Only light or darkness, and there is no shelter against darkness other than light. I didn't need food, since my fuel consisted of the light source within. I only needed to keep smiling genuinely and letting love flowing through me to keep the light spilling out of the singularity within.

As I zoomed out of my inner space to the outer world, I noticed the world in an entirely new way. I no longer saw good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse. I just saw love, in it's full technicolor beauty and surround-sound magnificence. I realized it is trying to find it's way in to each and every one of our lives, hearts and minds, but until we unclog the blockages in us that block out our inner light, we will keep living in the darkness that living in the shadows of those walls creates and never feel love's warmth. We'll keep adding stones to the walls around our hearts for fear of those shadows, and the cycle will continue until our life is completely shroud in darkness and our soul slowly dies from a lack of access to what fuels it - love. 

Answering My Own Question

I began this blog with a simple question: what does it mean to be a human being?

I've had a while to think about this, and I hate to admit it, but I am hardly closer to an answer. If anything, I feel farther away from one. What a year it has been..

If I had a time machine, and I could only choose one day to go back to, I think I know the day I would pick. It was a September afternoon of the year 2000, and my best friend B was in Atlanta at the airport. I never came to get him that day, and I am pretty sure that if I had, our history would have much different. Not necessarily better, but definitely different.

You see, he had helped me and my young son move away so I could return to school just a few weeks earlier. But when he came down, his cousin came along too, and I couldn't afford to help them both stay with me. I was barely able to feed myself, let alone my small child, and I certainly couldn't keep up two grown men. B understood that, and so without me even having to ask, he and his cousin were gone. But I knew there was more to our connection than just friendship. I knew why he came back, and I knew what his presence meant, but it terrified me, and in the end, I never came. Eventually, he got his ticket switched and flew home. Several months would pass before we would talk again, and from that point on, anything more than a friendship was not an option.

Who knows what would've happened if I had picked him up. We both had a lot of unresolved drama in our lives that manifested like late summer storm clouds - sudden, violent unexpected bursts that shattered our being to the core - which could've easily spilled over into our relationship and damaged it. Plus, as young as we both were, there is no doubt that we would've made many mistakes. Without the patience or understanding to persevere through the more difficult battles, it would've been hard to grow as close as we eventually did. We'll never know, because it never happened.

You see, ours turned out to be a pure love - pure in the sense that we had no reason to lie to eachother, so we never did. I could always count on him to give me his honest opinion on a matter, and he could count on me to do the same. He would take time to understand the situation from every angle before reaching an opinion. I never really understood the significance of that until recently, but his doing so taught me that understanding is a key to perspective. If you don't fully understand a situation, you can't deal with it properly.

This brings me to the point of answering my own question.. I asked what it means to be human, and I realize that I haven't fully understood the situation that is the current state of humanity, so I was unable to answer the question. Now, however, I realize that there is a bigger question we should be asking ourselves, given the current state of affairs.. What happens when we stop being human?
 

How To Choose the Right Partner

I am typing this with a huge grin plastered to my face, because the title is so absurd. Seriously.. I have no idea how to choose 'the right partner', let alone any clue as to what a 'right partner' is. Even if I could define one, it would be hard to know who really fits the description, because from my experience, the majority of people are not who they seem to be. It's hard to pick the right one when you don't really know who anyone is..

Consider this: when you go to the store, how comfortable would you feel buying food that said it contained certain nutrients only to find out that virtually none of those nutrients were actually in it? How different is that from a person who portrays themselves as an honest, giving, selfless person only to hide their dishonest, greedy, self-centered side? Both leave you feeling disappointed, because neither was what you thought it was.

The only thing that can show you who people really are is time and circumstance. You see, certain amounts of time and different circumstances give people opportunities to show you who they really are. Given enough time, people will show you how trustworthy they are, how reliable they are, how sincere they are, etc. Likewise, given enough time, people will also show you how human they are, and how easily they fall prey to their own shortcomings.

For example, I like to believe I am a good person. I mostly do the right thing, am considerate of others (for the most part), and try my hardest not to step on any toes as I walk down this road of life. However, despite how much it means to me to be a "good" person, I occasionally find myself doing things that are anything but good..

It seems that the more I try to do good, the better I am at achieving the exact opposite. When I reflect on why this is, the best I can come up with is a stupid Yoda quote: "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try."

There has to be something to this, because even when I am out playing disc golf and "try" to make a certain shot, that's usually when it flies the craziest. It's when I know what I want to do and simply DO it without even thinking about it that somehow the perfect shot just magically happens.

The tricky part is getting into that "do it without thinking about it" mental space and living there permanently. Most of the time, I walk through that space like it's connected to an ever-revolving door. As soon as I'm in it and become aware that I'm there, *poof* - the space is gone. Back into the revolving doors I go, walking in circles to no place in particular but always in search of a hope, dream and wish.

Now, what does all of that have to do with choosing the right person to be your partner? Or gaining a better understanding of who exactly a 'right partner' is? Everything. You see, until you can see yourself in all of the people around you - the right ones and wrong ones, good and bad ones - you will never really see them. And without being able to see them for who they are, you will never understand that they are all perfectly imperfect beings that have varying degrees of goodness and badness packaged neatly within a self-regulating human body. Nobody will ever be right for you. Why? Because you'll never be right with yourself and will always be looking for what you'll never be in someone else..

I know, that's not exactly the news you wanted to hear. And in some ways, it's not really news. It's really more of an opinion that anything else, but it came from a truth that I can't seem to deny no matter how hard I try. When people hold someone to a higher standard than they hold themselves, they spread emotional poison in the form of discontent simply because the other person couldn't be what they needed them to be. But here's the kicker.. People don't exist to be what WE need them to be. They simply exist. And we can learn to value and appreciate them for the imperfect people they are, or we can harp on the fact that they don't meet our checklist of unrealistic expectations of perfection.

Think about this: there is no person on this earth who is 100% good or 100% bad on any given day. Every single day, we are all a mixture of good and bad, some leaning more heavily towards the good side and others slanting hard in the opposite direction, but none of us are perfect. Yet we expect that the person we are with will never make a mistake. We expect that they should never hurt our feelings, and if they do, it's an action potentially punishable by exile from our life. But why? What do we ultimately gain from those expectations except the pleasure of building up one relationship after another just to tear them all down in the end? Seems like such a tremendous amount of energy being expended to have nothing to show for it all in the end..

I'm not saying to lower your standards and accept poor treatment, or to put everything into building something that ultimately isn't right for you (or possibly even dangerous for you), but I am saying that maybe the foundation for choosing a right man (or woman) is in being right with yourself first. So, for example, if you can't admit to your ex that you are in a bad relationship with person that runs in their circle of friends, don't expect that relationship to go very far.. And don't be mad at them when they expose you for the not-so-good person that you made the choice to be.. It's not that they aren't the right ones for you, it's that you aren't being the right one for you, and you should really, really take the time to ask yourself "Why?". It will help you more than you know.

Honesty matters, and it starts with self. Be honest with yourself about what you want, need and dream of having, and work hard to be the person you need to be to make those things happen in a way that you can appreciate them if and when they do enter your life. Most of us take the blessings we have for granted, then constantly ask for more. Perhaps if we focus on the blessings we do have and realize that problems are not stop signs, but rather guidelines to the right way to go, we will be able to appreciate the beautiful people who grace our lives with theirs and stop looking beyond them.

The Greatest Loss

My best friend killed himself on May 5, 2016. I'm pretty sure he did it the day before and they found his body on the 5th, but nonetheless, he is gone.

How do you mourn the loss of a connection so powerful that you feel incomplete without it? I know.. One day at a time. This man and I shared a heart and mind, and after watching him slowly lose both over the last few months of his life, I'm in a weird sort of numb place. Part of me has an energy and power that is ready to take off and do as much good as possible with my time left. The other part, however, is struggling to find a purpose to keep going.

I keep hearing him tell me to trust the journey. He says he's safe in my heart, and not to worry because he'll be with me every step of the way.I suppose I have to cling to that and keep going. Every step forward is the most powerful act of hope in the face of hopelessness. I just have to keep going.

Money is Freedom

Think about it.. Without money, you can't really do much in today's day and age. Transportation costs money, food costs money, kids cost money, school costs money, everything costs money. With enough money, you are free to choose whatever you want to choose. Without enough, you are stuck doing what you can. You are bound to what you can afford, and the less you have, the less you can afford.

So what, exactly, is money? It has changed from generation to generation, country to country, and from time to time, but it always represents the same thing: some arbitrary value made up by someone other than yourself. You can't just print some money and be cool, because if you try, you will have federal agents at your door in no time. They don't like it when people mess with their money.. No gang does.

"Well, we could always go back to the gold standard. That would solve all of our money problems!" While this is great in theory, in reality, it won't change a thing. It will slow their ability to print more money, and prevent the economic problems that come along with an ever-expanding money supply, but in the end, you'll still have problems. Not even gold is safe from the breaking of the promise of money. True, it isn't fiat money, so it has intrinsic value beyond that of an empty promise, but there is only so much of it. And it is difficult to store securely. It's heavy, so it isn't transported easily. And most importantly, there are SO many other important uses for gold that it seems silly to keep it all hoarded up as money.

You see, we have trillions upon trillions of little pieces of paper here in the U.S. Each and every one of them represents a promise made by the full faith and power of our government. Just let that sink in.. Our money is a government promise. What does history tell us about government promises? Don't have time to read your history? Well, no worries! Spoiler alert: They break them. Damn near every time..

So, what do we have so far? Money is a promise made by our government that basically assures us that we will be free if we collect enough of it. So you can safely view the poor, working or otherwise, as slaves. I would include the middle class as well, although at the rate this group is shrinking, it won't be relevant much longer. But since most middle class families are one disaster away from financial Armageddon, they aren't free. Freedom is being able to pay the 15% capital gains tax rate because your money is working hard for you, giving you time to pursue the things you want to do. Most people don't have the starting capital, financial knowledge or acuity to become wealthy. Instead, they work hard to become rich, always paying the 50% plus tax rate the the working poor are hit with when it's all said and done. They kicker is, they never get there. They never get rich. One or two squeak by, but most just work their lives away, trying to build castles out of sand.

Here's the biggest problem: They keep printing more promises. Promises that were already damn-near empty are now losing value by the second as more and more sheets of green paper bills fly off the printing presses. Each dollar that gets printed robs value from the dollars already in circulation. True, many of those dollars will get damaged or destroyed, so there is a need to keep new bills coming, but not at the rate that they are. For example, in 2014, roughly 6.6 billion notes were printed at the rate of 24.8 million per day, with a total face value of $560 million. Yet, only 5.95 million notes were destroyed. That's nearly 100 times more money created than was destroyed!!! Yikes! And if every dollar printed and added to the circulation is robbing value from the ones that exist, then we are in for big problems ahead. Freedom will be at the center of the issue, because we are selling our freedom in exchange for empty promises. Check out the U.S Treasury website for more recent facts and figures, if you dare..

I hate to say this, but we are in the middle of a global sovereign debt crisis, with our own government debt accounting for a tiny fraction of the overall outstanding global debt. So does it surprise anyone that a war cycle is building up right now? Does it surprise anyone that civil unrest is at an all-time high globally? Does it surprise anyone that the number one generator of money around the world is criminal enterprise? Drugs, human trafficking, slavery and other by-products of organized crime are earning one out of every $10 dollars earned. This is what government promises buy us..

What does it mean to be a human being?

I had to reflect on this. I've been struggling with forgiveness as of late, and this really got me thinking. When we see ourselves as separate from others, we lose sight of the "us" that is in "them". The emotions, the consciousness, the humanity. Yet, this is what many people do, especially if they struggle to see the humanity from the depth of the void in their soul.

So what does it mean to be a human being?