Sheep....notice.

Notice how during commercial breaks from the news, there are advertisements for anti depressant medication. They feed you the negative and then tell you how to make yourself feel better. Notice how when we see the gas prices drop from $3.89 to $3.25, we celebrate. Those $0.64 can't even buy you a pack of gum. Notice how everything is a war; War on drugs, War on terrorism, War on poverty etc. War by definition is the following: a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or between parties within a nation; warfare, as by land, sea, or air or a state or period of armed hostility or active military operations,conflict; We are taught to live with conflict. Notice how every medication has a side effect, which needs to be suppressed with another medication which has its own side effects and that one also needs another medication to have THAT side effect suppressed. Next thing you know, you are taking 5 different pills for back pain. You can also bet on getting addicted to the one that makes your pain all better for a little while. So while you are looking for your 5th doctor to get a pain pill prescription from, they will probably get a kickback from the pharmaceutical companies for prescribing it and you have just contributed to the multi-billion dollar industry which is the Pharmaceutical empire. Notice how after your child watches something on Nick Jr. or the Disney Channel, they have their next birthday and Christmas list put together, and also have a few things to add to your grocery list. Notice how congressmen/women quietly invest in companies related to Oil, Banking,Insurance and Weapons but scream when bills are suggested to benefit education, health care and the middle class. They only scream loud if you are in their pockets. Notice how the obesity, cancer, heart disease and diabetes rate in the U.S. is the highest in the industrial world but fast foods, processed foods, foods which have been modified with whatever the FDA says is ok (hormones) are significantly cheaper than the organic healthier alternative. Notice also Obesity leads to high cholesterol, heart disease, high blood pressure which all require medicine which further contributes to that empire we talked about earlier. Correlation? Maybe. Finally, notice, we are all sheep and the big bad wolves are having a field day. They are not hungry anymore and now just do what they do because they can. Baaa baaa baaaaaaa......So Sheep....NOTICE!

Question intent and then question some more!

The Death Approach

I have always believed that it is not death that we get sad about, but the suffering that leads ones life to it. After all, death is part of life and is the one thing we will all experience. However, I have had family members and friends who have passed on and I have struggled with understanding why there is so much sadness attached to a person dying. Even for the religious people, who believe after we die we have eternal life (depending on which religion). So why be sad about someone passing on to have eternal life....should that not be a celebration? When in human existence did we decide something so certain like death is so devastating it can send a person to a mental institution when someone they are attached to passes on?Actually, I would like to admit I believe a child dying is devastating. Maybe because we all are entitled to live our lives until we get old and gray? Or maybe because we have lived with the assumption that the correct chronology for death is parents first then children?

10LE's "The sun, myself and Jack Johnson"

I don't believe there is a correct approach on how to feel about death. I believe we are emotional beings who create attachments to people, where we often get comfortable and used to having them close enough to hug. We get used to seeing someone every day and often there is a comfort in knowing someone is a phone call away. When that comfort is interrupted, the interruption creates a void; We do not know how to fill a void which was filled with an attachment to someone who is not comparable to anyone else. Maybe the fear of the unknown; The not knowing for certain if there is a heaven or hell, or where the spirit goes once it leaves its shell, can leaves us shaken and sad. Maybe sadness comes from the realization that nothing lasts forever and that all things are temporary, good or bad. However, if we can step out of the sadness of death, we may be able to find a place of peace and gratefulness. We can be grateful for the opportunity to have created attachments to someone who is not comparable to anyone else, we can be grateful to have had the opportunity to feel love for someone, we can be grateful to have had the opportunity to experience life and to have been invited to take part in someones journey. We can be grateful and find peace that in the end, all of our outcomes are the same; We all die and if we would like to believe, we all meet again.

We suffer because we think.....

Our mind is powerful beyond our own comprehension; and so it makes us suffer. It creates our realities and allows for us to expand our horizons or keep ourselves imprisoned in our thought processes. It provides for interesting conversations with ourselves of momentary clarity or aching confusion. Even when we sleep, the mind travels through our subconscious, rummaging through our deepest thoughts and compiling dreams that may wake us up in drenched sweat. It never stays quiet. It can argue with itself or stroke its own ego all in the same conversation. It can make itself up but then change itself 2 seconds later....and once the decision is followed through, it can harbor regret and guilt in its deepest corners creating agitating doubt. It makes it all a terrible tragedy, when the reality of it all is no such thing. It creates fear and plays with it by introducing ideas which feeds its growth. So what to do? Don't stop to think....just stop to think.

10LE's "Behind the Clouds"

                                        

The Romanticism game

"Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out."~Dawn Powell

So there,...romanticism is people as they would like to be....I would also like to add romanticism is also people as others would like them to be, events as people would like them to be, something that someone would like it to be. In the end, the people, event and something never are what it is wished to be. So why do we romanticize all of them as such? Maybe we should blame our creativity? Our endless imagination which can make up whatever it wants, usually triggered by what the heart wants to feel. Maybe we should blame music and movies, which always seem be written just for us including the fitting outcomes with either happy or heartbreaking endings.

We even romanticize our past. As I always say, hindsight is 20/20 with a slight case of amnesia. Then again, I also believe we romanticize our past based on how we feel about our present. Lack of contentment can send a person lurking in the past and romanticizing the loneliest days as one of their best, romanticizing a love that evaporated to the love that got away, romanticizing sleepless exhausting nights with a crying baby as sleepless nights of bonding with the new love of their life. 

It is a cruel game, the game of romanticism. Even more cruel is if you give in to it and assume romanticism as satire (or as people, events, things as they are), only to realize that romanticism took advantage of your naivety and pulled you in and spit you out with the disappointments of failed expectations. To avoid this, play the game as I do.....let it help you create. Create art....however you want to define it. After all, if we should blame our creativity, we are aware of its capabilities and should take advantage of its romanticism. As much as you try to escape it, it is part of the game of life. Either play it or create it.

 

Salvador Dali's ~the meditative rose....

Hello Past, it is me...goodbye!

Hello past, it is me. I have been thinking about you a lot these past few years. With every year that goes by, the year gone is added to my mental thoughts and consumes my present moments often suffocating me with a range of overwhelming feelings I have attached to you. I have to say you have driven my life and I have allowed for you to dictate many decisions I have made in present moments. Often not understanding that it has been you that has been my influence and contributor to my mental agitation. I have come to realize it is time for you and I to accept each other. It is time we shake hands and for me to leave you there....in the past. I accept you as you are because you were a part of my journey. I am grateful to you for making me the person I am but I no longer need you to haunt my my mind; to feel as if I could go back and fix all that I did wrong or relive all that I did right. You will forever be a part of me, but one that I should not carry on my back, but in my heart. In order to do so, I will leave all the guilt, the sadness and the anger with you. If I do think of you, I will be able to see you only as a reminder to continue to appreciate the present and to kindly dismiss you with only love. I will give you credit for every lesson I have learned and have applied and continue to apply to my journey. It is time to continue my chapters, so I will flip the page to the next ones with contentment. Hello past, it is me....goodbye.

10LE's "journey and the horizon"

Jesus Part II

...my opinion stands....Jesus was an enlightened man who should be admired for his teachings. The idea that he died for our sins so we will have eternal life is not enough of a statement for me to believe that statement as is. With that said, I would like to suggest "he died for our sins" is a metaphor. A metaphor that symbolizes he came here to teach us all how to approach ourselves, others and God to deliver us from the negativity we ourselves create like fear, hate and judgement. During my research, I have also found the story of Jesus' life  is not only original to the bible, but also to the Hindu religion with the birth and life of Krishna, in the Buddhist religion with the story of Buddha, the story of Odysseus, the story of Romulus,the story of Dionysus, the story of Horus and a few more. This is not to try to take away anything from Christians, but to simply become a well rounded informed being. As I have mentioned many times before, I am not one to put a limit on what God is and I feel if we all limit our thoughts and do not expand our knowledge, we will do ourselves an injustice and reject all that God wants for us to learn. Although I do not have anymore questions about Jesus, I will continue on my journey to learn more about his teachings, as I have continued to learn about Gandhi's teachings and Buddha's teaching. I have found they are all very very similar. In fact, Gandhi himself believed the similar suggestion I have made about Jesus: "What, then, does Jesus mean to me? To me, he was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had. To his believers, he was God’s only begotten Son.* Could the fact that I do or do not accept this belief make Jesus have any more or less influence in my life? Is all the grandeur of his teaching and of his doctrine to be forbidden to me? I cannot believe so....http://www.sacred-living.org/gandhi-what-jesus-means-to-me" my feelings exactly as Gandhi best put it.

10LE's God paints pretty pictures