I shouldn't be writing this. I should be doing research for my new job. I'm playing it like I did school though and putting it off till the last moment and enjoying the sweet escape of not doing what I should be doing.

I'm thinking right now about relationship. Mostly the relationship we have with ourselves and how that manifests into our relationship with life. I took all these courses a few years ago that sat me for days in a room with hundreds of other people, and we were all looking at ourselves and trying to understand some fundamental truths about the human condition in order to improve our lives. What I got out of the thousands of dollars worth of courses and hours/years spent in this exploration and then years of meditation and reading on these subjects is this:

1.Everyone is afraid all the time: What we are afraid of will differ depending on the person and their background, but if you can come at any situation from the stand point that people are basically fearful then you can calm down and be with almost any situation that is occuring. And its not that you want to assume or pretend that you know that people are afraid, but if you can presume that the underlying factor for any strange, distant, or eratic behavior is probably fear then you can focus yourself on not taking this behavior personally, and move past it. When I realized that other people are just as afraid of me as I used to be of them, it gave me the ability to really be with people in a genuine and compasionate manner and it really shifted how I regard people in general.

2. Loving yourself is the most powerful mechanism on the planet: The truth is most people don't love themselves. They focus all their time and energy on trying to make other people love them. If you can actually get through all the bullshit that keeps you from loving yourself, and forgive yourself for all the dumbass things that you have done or that you do, then people will naturally love you. The work isn't about trying to find how to make people love you, its about uncovering why you don't love yourself.

3. You can't give what you don't got: I used to go around thinking I could help people. Thinking that other people need your help is a really demorilizing concept because you are basically coming from the assumption that you have something that others do not. I was able to get over my addiction to helping others when I realized that I had no ability to help myself. To give you an example: when I was diagnosed with exhaustion and finally had my house to myself and some money to live off of so I could actually rest and heal, I had this intense desire to move my mother up to my house for a month so I could take care of her, thusly avoiding my own needs, and really continuing to hurt myself. This is when I realized my own insane need to find other people around me who were hurting more then me, just so I could feel some disgusting sense of power by being better then them. Totally gross. I forgave myself for this, and forced myself to love myself by taking the month off and giving myself all the love and tenderness I was convinced I could only give to others.

4. Responsibility is Empowering: Living like you own your life is an outrageous and beautiful place to live from. When we act like other people's actions, thoughts, or beliefs about us create our reality, then we loose the ability to be the creators of our own lives. I believe that we each embody god, that there is a divine spirit that is housed within each of us. What this means is that there are no mistakes, and that every moment is perfect just as it is, and that we are always perfect just as we are. This is a really difficult truth to maintain for extended periods of time, but as I grow proficient with it I find that it is shifting my reality and giving me access to understanding the flow of life and energy that I was previously blind to.

I think thats it for now. I should be responsible and get to work on the things I'm getting paid to think about. Thank you for reading, and peace to your evening.