Alignment

What is alignment with our true higher being (aka God or source)?

Well there is no disrespect for other human beings. 

There is no lack of love for humanity or other humans. 

There is no lack of abundance.

There is no ego driven behavior (competition or judgement). 

There is love, abundance, acceptance and peace.  

One must love oneself before one can find a healthy relationship.  You are complete and then you find someone that compliments that. If not than you will always be disappointed, as no one will ever be able to love you like you love yourself. It is not anyone's job to love you. It is your job to love you. 

Science is Spiritual

So, for me science is now just starting to uncover what my intuition was telling me. I started pondering human existence and God at a young age, a defining moment in second grade talking about religion and God lead me to questioning his existence. I remember not being able to sleep, because the questions and thoughts kept coming. Here is a good video from Ted Talks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0--_R6xThs

He gives a compelling argument. Thank you MIT for bringing some of the brightest minds together.

Goodbye 2014!!

Boston Roommates, 2014

Dear 2014:

You were quite a year.  You changed me and my life so much and so quickly, I could barely keep up.  There is a whole group of people who seem to think that I owed them more notice on my leaving Boston (despite that it wasn’t even a full time job or even steady work, nor did I have much notice myself).  They didn’t talk to me for months and then when they called me up for work I was in LA, and they were upset.  In February, I lost my job and my residence and had three weeks to find both.  Impossible? Yeah, it is. I moved to my parents for a few weeks, that didn’t go so well. Then I moved to LA for a few months to live with my best friend.  I think if I had been an unemployed actor, I would have had a better chance of finding work there.  After all, I don’t think I am cut out for LA...I felt rather alien, a stranger in a strange land which felt a bit like a movie set itself.  I spent a solid month pounding the pavement and sending out resumes, when I couldn’t even land a basic “floor manager” position at a restaurant, I gave up. There is something unsettling about being over qualified for positions and getting turned down.  It was after this that I decided to focus on elections in Haiti and throw my energy into fundraising and planning for that. 

LA Baby!

LA Life, 2014

Our plan was to change the political system, it was our chance to put theory into practice and make a real difference.  While it was a risk, nothing else seemed to be working out for me and I believed that this is what my life was meant for (creating change).  For a solid two months I focused on drafting up documents, flushing out details and coming up with budgets.  We even had foreign interest for funding.  The day before I got on a plane I told my friend “we can’t fail, I have risked everything for this.”  He agreed.

Haiti, 2014

In July, I came to Haiti to fundraise for a political movement.  By mid-August, things had changed again, elections were cancelled and everything was up in the air.  And here I am today, politics are still a mess and I am trying to push several projects.  I lived briefly in Carrefour twice now… until the situation changed and my being there was inconvenient.  Recently, I've spent much time alone with sporadic electricity.  I suppose this is a modern day Thoreau experience which has taught me much and heightened my self awareness. Thankfully, I amuse myself.  I can be full of energy and interact with people regularly, but I need time to recuperate and center myself but I have known this for a while, people both energize and drain me.  Whatever I thought I knew about life before Haiti, Haiti takes it a notch further to make sure the lesson was learned forever. I haven’t given up on my dream.  I was told that we failed, I said that I wasn’t dead yet, so no I haven’t failed.  The vision has remained the same, yet the path to how we get there has changed often.  I have a new path and with help from a few, I hope I can further the vision.

“I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." -Alan Greenspan


Here is what I learned the last year:

• I have learned the meaning of life, now that might be different for some people, but I have learned the meaning of MY life.  I always thought the smarter or more enlightened you are, the better off you are, but seemingly the wiser I become, the more misunderstood I am.  The more life throws at me the stronger I become, and I can still smile.  This has a tendency to make people think that you are crazy because you would have to be right? Not really.  

• Science and spirituality really do go hand in hand. Thankfully in my lifetime, what I suspected as a child to be the truth (enlightenment) has actually started to be proven by science.  While I am intuitive, I also like hard facts that science provides. I believe science will prove many more things as people start to open their minds.  Society and religion seem to hinder the learning of the truth. 

•  My ego was also so big that it overshadowed some of my humanity, not that I was particularly more egocentric than anyone else but with an ego more in tune with your higher being, the more self aware you are.  Recently my higher being had a conversation with my ego, it lasted all of like 5 minutes, because my ego just whined and made excuses for why I was a certain way, and my higher being just told my ego to man up and move on. Lol.

•  I have learned to love myself completely, faults and all and this has allowed me to love other people more fully, even those who most people think should not be forgiven.  This is something that makes people think you are crazy, particularly when they were trying to manipulate you.

•  I have learned people will tell themselves anything to justify their bad behavior.  Arguing with them is also a waste of time.  At the end of the day, we all know they are lying to themselves (even they do deep down which causes self hate which again is their own problem). 

•  Sometimes all the positive energy in the world will not bring you what you want.  I do believe in the Law of Attraction (as well as the other 11 Universal Laws) yet sometimes there are lessons to be learned, and what you REALLY want out of the world, far outweighs the wanting of something small.  Long term needs and wants outweigh the short term immediate wants.

• When you learn not to care what others think and you regain your power, you lose the people that enjoyed manipulating you, sometimes these are people you love.

• Most people are all talk.  They talk a good game but their life doesn’t reflect what they are preaching, this of course leads to self hating which is projected on to others.

• Forgiving is the key to inner peace.

•  I have learned to find abundance in myself.  I always get what I need when I need it.  It might not be a lot, but it is always enough to get by. 

• Everything is energy and everything is connected.  And to try to separate things is futile.  It is one big ecosystem. 

• Time isn’t linear and doesn’t move at one pace.    

• I was right to question the economists that treated “resources” as limitless and just focused on market and demand.

So, goodbye 2014!  You have improved me as a human being but I am not sad to see you go.  I am ready for the new year and new challenges! 

Peace and Love,

Moi (the adventurer and lover of life)

Self Awareness and Honesty for a Happy Life

Again, I find myself struggling with other people's self-deception which is affecting my relationship with them. The actions and words that are so obviously driven out of fear.  Apparently the ego has a defense mechanism of "splitting."  Splitting diffuses anxiety that happens when people can't grasp the complexity of a situation and simplify it to make it easier to think about.  It is devious because it reinforces a sense of good and virtue while demonizing those who do not share the opinion and value (uh that would be me being demonized).  This compartmentalization depicts a distorted view of reality and effects people's ability to attract and maintain relationships. According to Neel Burton, Splitting can easily flip with friend and lovers being thought of as personified virtue at one time, and vice at another (and back and forth). Okay, so great... Now I know what it is called and I am not the only one with screwy relationships where I just ignore the 10% of their craziness (or the split).

It turns out, humans inevitably do quite a lot of lying to themselves.  But because it is unconscious behavior, it is difficult to realize until we become more self-aware.  People are more apt to lie to themselves because they are afraid to face the truth.  It is fear that keeps us from facing the truth.  What will people think? What will that mean to me?  How will I cope?  Unfortunately, I find the biggest lies that I see are often in dealing with romantic (or unromantic) relationships.

So, while we all want to believe our thoughts are accurate reflections of reality, in fact, most of the time they are very inaccurate and reflects painful realities that we don't want to admit.  

I myself had a relationship that lasted way longer than its expiration date.  It indeed takes strength to fathom how you will separate your lives and move on without this person, no matter how miserable you are. Honestly, I actually didn't even know I was that miserable until I broke up with him.  Afterwards, people noted I looked happier (despite I was anxious) and I felt like a burden had been lifted. It took me a while to realize I wanted more (although I wasn't sure if I was asking too much out of life, was having it all an option?).  I had decided that it was better to gamble on having it all then to wonder for the rest of my life.  But after I made this scary change (it was a bit like leaping off a cliff) with gusto I have tackled my fears, resolved to never let fear rule my life. I have never regretted breaking it off, despite the loneliness, broken hearts, etc. because I also found pure joy and happiness and every relationship has brought me closer to a happier life and healthier relationships. 

So, if you are ready to face the truth, here are your five things you should do so you do not remain in self-denial:

1. Stop saying yes when you mean no. If it isn't an absolute Yes, then it is a No.
2. Realize that your reality is not everyone's reality.  It just isn't.  Your reality is based on your own views, moralities, abilities and restrictions which are special to you.
3. Acknowledge your fear.  I had fear that I couldn't survive on my own so I stayed with my fiance but what spurred me to act, was a bigger fear, that if I stayed with him, I would end up a disgruntled old woman wondering if there was a greater love out there for me.  Regret is far scarier than anything I can imagine.
4. Recognize if you are keep flip flopping or trying to convince yourself of something.  I had a boyfriend who used the same qualities I had that he said he loved to break up with me a later. 
5. Identify your defense mechanisms. This will help you realize when you start slipping into a lie. 

Below is a good link to a TEDx Talk for more about self deception. 

TEDx: Cortney Warren: Honest Liars: The Psychology of Self-Deception

Malfunctions of the Neurons or an Alien Takeover?

The other day, a friend said some hurtful things, yet one cannot take it personally.  The person talking to me was not the person I knew and loved.  If a person you know is not acting her/himself, disregarding their dreams and being negative and slightly abusive, the questions is Do you turn your back on them? Do you walk away?  This was my first instinct, to reject the bad taste left in my mouth and distance myself from the person leaving it. Yet strangely, (perhaps after too many episodes of Doctor Who) instead of judging the alien who is before me, I look for remnants of my friend.  Somewhere in there under a thick layer of fear and ego, the core of the person you love exists.  To help them find their humanity, empathy and find the beauty in life, you must help them remember their dreams and themselves.  You do not abandon them, even if he/she was a Dalek. This is not to say that getting rid of negativity and negative people is a bad thing, but sometimes someone is just a little lost. (Geek reference in Season 8, Episode 2 the Doctor helps a Dalek find its humanity after it's normal neuron path is damaged, he fixes it so it is again destructive, and then helps it again find beauty in life)

While perhaps your life doesn't follow after Doctor Who series, that could be a bit disruptive :) yet life can be a good adventure though, and sometimes you lose your adventure companion to the aliens but you always rescue him because that is what good companions do.

You can read more about empathy and how neural changes really can alter someone's morality in the link below.  You can remap your neurons if you work at it, and this does change your "reality."

Psychology Today: The Neuroscience of Morality Malfunctions