Lotus

I still am the same soul underneath it all, except with more years, more truths uncovered, some disappointments, some achievements and so many conscious breaths. 

Days move and I move and life moves, days end and the night begins; just for me and my words. I peak through its curtains and I am summoned in. There is so much love for me here, inside. The dark is not scary, fear acknowledges me, and I nod, we have had our adversities, but behind these dark veils, there is only grace and fear only bows to that. 

Inside this night I hold not just my own heart, but the hearts of loved ones, I hold their names and their spirits dance and swirl around mine. The motion is circular and the light is present within exploding like millions of fireworks.

The truth is mine, and I know, I am one with my being, this is the space I have been cultivating. This is the light I had been probing and this is the night I had been trying so hard to befriend and uncover. 

Like a single lotus in the groundlessness of concrete I set my self aside and plug into the night. Consciously and carefully I find that ends meet, fear settles into faith and I unfold and dissolve letting life in. 

Gloriously

Story upon story, my mind plays and skips across roads and thoughts less traveled. But then again, the roads I have travelled keep on teaching me, grilling my stamina and testing my willingness to accept the gloriousness of being so small in such a brilliantly huge world.

My heart is heavy sometimes, and my choking anxiety hits hard, but on most days my peace prevails, fed by the beauty of shores, lakes and sunflower fields. 

The stillness of home feels as it should, but the pumping heart keeps pushing my eyes open, I can’t sleep; there is so much to see. So I put myself in my bed after days of sleeping on planes trains and cars, using sign language to try and describe the confusion of being so thrilled and so lost all at once. 

I rest my case for now and leave some of my words here, I must release the rest with my eyes closed and my mind open. The soul glares with color and summons me to slow down and rejoice. The high of adventure sways my fingers into a halt, and I pull myself from this practice into a deeper one.

To be seen

Possibly you think of me before you sleep, probably you don’t, and that’s ok. At least one of us does. When have I become so diplomatic? So soft spoken and easy to sway just as your wind blows. I know exactly when, how and why . 

The beat remains and the pounding gets deeper and sharpens my senses. Things are going to change, we are probably going to change, and only we will know. So let’s live today and continue exactly like this. Today, nothing needs to change. 

I sit on the steps of the front door of our come what may life and I stare at you twirling and becoming beside me. You extend your arms to me and I cannot but come to you. We wrestle to the ground and laugh as we crash. My bruised finger amuses you as you pretend that your eyes cannot see the blue. 

I start to explain where the pain is and how you can’t relate to it because it’s not yours, as you stare into my serious eyes with student like attention. Am I really lecturing you about pain? So typical. Yet you still go ahead and bring me a bag of ice you put it on my hand and ask me to continue with a smirk. 

This matters. The bag of ice, the smirk, the listening… it all counts to the fact that you see me. That is all that matters, and don’t we all want to be seen? 

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The moon looks different tonight, closer. I feel different tonight, weaker. I look into the night sky and I am a night sky. I look into tomorrow and I am nowhere. I belong in there, as though I was molded for it and by it. My slow mind attacks itself, my soul is at war and here I am in the middle of nowhere. 

I decide that I am tired, I lay down beneath my hopes and above all my fears. The terror of leading a mediocre life pinches the skin on my feet, urging me to move to rebel. The fear of missing out grabs my arms, and the thoughts of permanent torture choke my throat. How do I get out of nowhere? What now? 

I close my eyes, and I decide to let go. I decide that I am tired and I have no use running away, because I only risk being torn apart in the process. So what happens if I stop struggling? What happens if I stop pulling away? The pain stops, I can breathe again. The choking dissipates, the fear remains but it becomes softer. I become lighter. 

I look into my soul and the war is ending, I must now rebuild a world surrounded by hope and fear. I must softly exist in between. Softly and slowly destruction subsides, all that is left is my will. It remains and I remain surrounded by nothingness and the night sky. 

Mortality: The ceiling

Like a little bodied statue I stare at the ceiling. One of many ceilings and walls I’ve faced and knocked down, this one refuses to move, it refuses to let me through. I let go and decide to just lay there, maybe now I see the big picture, maybe now I see the truth. Maybe this ceiling is keeping me from completely fading away and losing touch. 

I trace my thoughts back but I have none, I have gotten too good at quieting my mind, I have become stronger and less concerned with my body. The dread remains however. The unyielding and unrelenting need to belong somewhere to something to someone, and to feel infinite remains like the strongest emotion, the most powerful thought to ever exist. I cannot come to grips with mortality, not yet. 

I stare still and remain in my body, feeling an utmost safety in it, fearing the thought of ever losing it. Fearing the day that I let it go and crack the ceiling. Why is there no infinity right here and now? Why can we not have that? Is that the biggest ego of all? To want it forever? To have continuous return? Why is it excruciatingly painful and dreadful to be so close mortality and still refuse to see it?

Is this the highest feeling of love? Is it the newfound appreciation to every spirit surrounding yourself that gives you the courage to do this? Gives you a purpose and a light? How much have we forgotten to be able to be here today? How much are we blinded from that let’s us sleep at night and not crawl back to our mothers. 

I find my dark friend laying next to me, and together we look up at the ceiling. We hold eachother, I comfort him with my hope and with my light, while he confronts me with the truth: my mortality and everyone else’s, and our never ending pursuit of a single extra moment of being awake and breathing together. 

The choice

What happens when you pause? When you are drenched in a moment, be it of grace or of hurt and pain, what happens if you can just pause it and exit for a second? 

What happens if you pause a moment of suffering and step out of that frame and look at yourself? What would you see? 

I cannot answer for you, but I can answer that question for myself. 

I am terrified in the moments leading up to the pause, I do not want to stop, I become the pain, I become the illness I become the anger, the fear and the suffering. It takes courage and unrelenting faith to split from myself. The act of forming space, creating distance between what you feel and what you truly are is agonizing and foreign. How could it be that I am not pain if it is all that I can possibly think about and feel? How is it possible to separate myself from my sick body or from my worried mind. What if this is it? What if i don’t live forever, what if I am not healthy forever, what if I lose everything that makes me who I am? What if I am a victim of the suffering, and there is nothing I can do about it?

 The path towards self destruction is paved by our own hands before anybody else’s. 

But, there is a way out. All the what ifs are then stopped by one thought: if so, let it be, but I am not the suffering nor am I its victim. Upon that recognition, I overcome the fear, I release myself. I become an agent, no longer a victim. And in that split second, that pause is a transformation and a triumph. 

Dwelling in that pause, and pulling yourself up requires practice and requires patience. There are no shortcuts. The fear will always remain, so will our strength to overcome. It is essentially all a choice, every second of every day. 

The Life Game: Set your build to win

Inspiration found me this morning as I was scrolling through my Facebook homepage. A video posted compares your human life from birth to end to a video game; and goes through the entire logical process in less than four minutes. As an avid video gamer myself, it was both ironic and creative to say the least.

The oversimplification made me think about the struggles we go through in order to achieve our goals whatever they might be. I, eventually as anybody would, started thinking about myself and how I manage to balance my life, the things that helped me progress, how I owned my experiences and continue to learn every step of the way. Three major elements keep me in check: practicing mindfulness, dedication to physical fitness and consistency for professional achievement. Yet the thought of attempting to balance mindfulness, physical fitness and professional achievement might induce so much anxiety, that you dismiss the possibility before even trying it. But consider this:

Your life game begins with a standard build, note that I’m dismissing socio-economic status as a start because I am solely talking about “free skills”. Mindfulness, fitness and achievement are unaffected by your external conditions, you could be at top of the ladder or starting from scratch, this should apply to you indiscriminately.

Your standard human build can take you far enough up until the challenges are more complex, and until the challengers facing you have learned new skills and developed their build. Then you will feel stuck, possibly defeated and exhausted by life. While you are still using your basic fight or flight mechanism, others have mastered self-control and tend to stand and fight in situations you would definitely flee, as that is your original coding, undeveloped.

Master the skill of Mindfulness:

To learn this skill, you have to recognize that every human’s basic build consists of personal experience; a lived past, a happening present and a subjective perception of a future. You have to acknowledge your past, own your experience, identify the lessons you have to learn, seek help if it proves to be difficult. You have to acknowledge the blessing of being alive, of having breath run through you. Identify with that breath on a daily basis, and practice being in the present moment, thankful and adamant on self-love not selfishness. The future will be taken care of, when you master the other two skills.

Master the skill of physical fitness:

To learn this skill, you have to recognize that your average build body, if no disabilities are present, is intended for mobility and functional movement. The less you use it for that purpose, the faster you deteriorate and battle numerous glitches and viruses, and the sooner you lose the game. Start with respecting the functionality of your body, follow a fitness program, the little achievements you make whether touching your toes when you couldn’t or performing a series of back flips on command, all reflect on your overall performance in the life game. You will become stronger and empowered, your build allows you to tackle challenges differently. Little achievement matter just as much as big ones. The flip-side of a series of fails, is the consistency that leads to lessons learned and essentially achievement by virtue of trial and error.

Mastering those skills helps you recharge your spirit and your body. You will recognize your weaknesses and deal with them before it’s too late. You will be ahead in your game.

Mastering the skill of professional achievement:

To learn this skill, you must have a clear goal. You have to know why you are in the job and what you plan on achieving by remaining in it for a certain time period. There is no shortage of opportunities, even in today’s economy. Identify where you are on the resourcefulness scale and make your decisions accordingly. Don’t let fear stop you from taking a leap into the next level. But make sure that your boots will jump high enough and your build can stand the impact of a miscalculation.

The life game is different for each and every one of us. We all have the capacity to improve and to develop ourselves in continuously competitive and challenging game play. Stay curious, stay present and improve with every opportunity you get. Keep your head in the game, and believe that winning everyday is actually possible as long as you are in the game.

Reflections

I have to be quiet because this might not make sense. The words I have are attempting a transgression to my spirit. Yet it is such a sweet transgression, it is actually necessary and vital. I bite my lip and I cannot keep this secret to myself anymore. I cannot hold this truth in any longer. It must come out dressed in my petty words; but it will make itself seen regardless.

The truth is that love prevails. It prevails when we let it. It prevails because the world is big enough, wide enough and thirsty enough for light. It prevails when the darkness has eaten itself and it’s inhabitants alive. Beneath the fear, a light travels through time and space to reach those who seek it, regardless how much money they make, regardless how they look and what language they speak. Light finds you because it pierces through every darkness as long as there is a surface willing to reflect it and spread it to the world. 

Love exists and bounces off from your reflective heart. So sit with that, look inside and beneath your torment. You will find that a joy you last experienced as a child still burns within you and is shamelessly requesting permission to fix you, help you out of that torment and simply make you happy again. Because really, what is this all about, if not drenching ourselves and one another in love every opportunity we get.

Double-Tap

I lift my finger and tap once, twice and express how much I like something. My heart remains steady and my breathing breaks as I let out a gentle cough from the unbearable smell of smoke coming out of the lips of the love of my life. This is normal, so is going out everyday and making a living. This is normal, so is changing our plans to fit our moods. This is normal, so is working out our muscles every other day so that we get to keep on living for a slightly longer time, experiencing slightly less pain when we double and triple tap on something we like on a screen when we are 75 years old.

One coffee, two green teas, another coffee and a meal to help my stomach digest the stress of the day and the level of alertness required to maintain a stable job. This is normal. I look up from my phone and I realize that after all my shy attempts during my teenage years to actually escape the world of normalcy, I have successfully landed right in the heart of it as I hit my quarter of a century mark. Maybe many checkpoints are bound to come and maybe none; and here I am still tapping at a screen telling everybody, and nobody really, what I really like.

I cannot solve this mystery; neither will I try. They all know and so do you, we all live here together. We all love together and encourage each other to run as fast as possible towards a glimpse of magic in this world. We run to green places and blue seas, we find the trance and lust of living in the darkness of underground clubs with good bass. We get on the ride everyday and snap a selfie wearing our egos on our sleeves, hoping that the world still likes us because we are beautiful, successful or simply just available.

We all live in this world, some participate others observe; and it is normal.

Normal as it is, how much of what we like have we ever tried? ever learned? ever experienced? ever proactively sought? I ask myself this first, and leave the rest here…

Nothing Lost

It remains a struggle to look outside of yourself and truly comprehend the wonder in this world. It remains an endless challenge to still believe at the end of the day, right before you close your eyes that you have been a force of good, a positive reinforcement to the powers at play. 

I dwell in the sunlight as I write, it envelopes my body like a loving mother covers a cold child. The spots that have darkened with life, are cleared away by the grace of light. 

I am still and bright, I am quiet as I gain my strength back. Nothing is ever lost inside this light. She watches from afar and greets my wanderlust soul, she watches from afar and smiles as I win this fight. 

It requires practice and might, it requires a journey through the dark. It is sometimes easy and at times a plight. She grants me a lantern and a ring to my step; she teaches me a song and disappears from sight. 

Nothing is ever lost within this light.