Death, Fear And Discovery…

St. Louis Cemetary No. 2

Death comes only when we’re not expecting it, for those are the times we don’t fear it.

These words have been making the rounds in my head for the last week. I’ve been doing TM for the past four months and though I no longer worry as much about who I am, I do feel myself worrying about others more often.

I’m not sure why, but I feel like there are things in this life which can be solved, not by weapons, callousness or hate, but by wanting to be better than we were yesterday.

Death it seems is something which I’d wanted to do, at least in the early part of this year. It’s now nearly August and I find myself looking to experience new things, take trips places and do the things I’d put off out of fear.

Life it seems is more important to me than it was a year ago, and this past year I’ve lost my grandfather and my wonderful Abigail.

My grandfather was something I saw coming; Abigail, I knew was going to happen soon, but I didn’t want it to. She’d sat by me through all my migraines and now, when I have one, I cast my eyes toward her bed, which still sits in the corner, and I find myself thinking about what a good dog she was and how she came along and helped me get through many things. I think that’s why she lived her 16 years, she was watching over me.

We often hide from the life we have, either in alcohol, drugs, depression or repressed feelings, but today I can honestly say I am living the life I want.

It’s an odd feeling to live the life you want, and not give shit what anyone thinks about you, or your life choices. I discovered that there is only person I need to make happy with my choices, myself and I don’t care for the thoughts of anyone else.

This year I found myself, I wonder what the rest of the year will bring?

 

Being Strong and Fighting Through the Demons.

Me and my brother

There are many days in our lives when we need to be strong for someone else; funerals, at times of stress and when someone is trying to recover from a severe illness.

Illness strikes all of us at times we wish it hadn’t. We learn about ourselves during those times, as well as about those around us.

Each person has a reason for being here. Whether it’s to learn, teach or to help. But we find in ourselves the things we wish we’d known long ago, and sometimes we discover the truth about who we were all along.

This truth helps us through the bad times we’ve struggled through, through the torment of our demons and the hazards of getting through life without knowing who we are.

There are many days in our life, but the days we struggle are when we learn the most.

We discover abilities to grow, to learn and to find in ourselves the greatness which has been kept from us.

The greatness we find in our struggle will keep us safe in the challenges we face and possibly help us be the person we were supposed to be before the demons took away our sanity and our peace.

Peace is the hardest part of our struggle. The peace we find in this life will guide us into the next and keep the demons away.

When demons come calling we struggle the hardest, not because we’re weak, but just the opposite. We struggle because of the strength we carry within us.

This strength feels like it appears out of the blue, but that’s only the demon’s trick.

The finality of this trick makes us believe we’re not full of the strength to live. To survive and to continue to thrive in this life we must chase the demons, rid ourselves of their presence and discover the truth; we’ve always had the strength to fight the demons, we were just unaware of how strong we truly are.

Today my brother is having surgery to remove cancer from his kidney. If you could, say a prayer for him today or wear red and white, it would be amazing.

I don’t do this for anyone, but I’ll do anything for my big brother. Love you Chris.

Finding Our Family

Finding family obliges us to discover who we are, what we believe about ourselves, and whether our childhood was the way we remember it.

We discover our family not in the way we believe. It’s not through our blood, it’s through the connections we make, the lives we touch and how we understand the things we can’t explain about ourselves.

The things which make us who we are not the things which make our family.

We become who we are though our life because of the people we meet and those which have a positive effect on who we eventually become.

Family are those people who create the will to be who we want to be, not those who want us to fit into a mold.

The discovery of who our family is sets us free because of the reasons of being the ones we are.

We should let no family member define who we are, what we want or whether we love ourselves.

The love we have for ourselves should be more important than the love we have for anyone else.

Finding the right family helps us decide who we are and what we want.

When we get to the end of our lives and see the family we have will we say I wish I’d have done this or that, or should we say, “I’m glad I have this family.”

You Can Do Anything, Remember That.

What happens to our lives when we stop believing we can do anything?

We see things falling through the cracks. Our lives stare at us from under blackened covers.

We hide from the world within a shadow of the person we want to become, because we’re afraid that person will rock the boat, disturb the world around us, or that we’ll fail.

The shadow is the person we keep ourselves from being for many reasons, but what is it about doing our lives justice that keeps us from wanting the life we owe to ourselves?

The sudden jarring jolt of pain we get thinking about the crashing waves upon the shore of the land we want to live in keep us in hiding, they keep us from doing the creative things, the things which make us alive.

Our life feels under the control of a puppeteer. They pull one string, move one small piece and bam, we’re lost, screwed and destroyed.

When we cut the strings, taking away the feeling of the puppeteer, we find the life we’ve wanted all along, but in cutting those strings we risk ridicule for doing something harder than those around us.

They tell you its impossible, tell you you’re nothing and laugh at you for trying.

These are the people whom you once called friends, they mock you, and do things which, if they were your friends, they wouldn’t do.

The cracks in who we are only visible to us. We see the damage caused, we know the pain we’ve lived through. Those around us only see the shell, we know the person living in the shell.

Who we are isn’t as important as what we do.

Our life is nothing without the failure or without the boat moving through the currents.

We fail, but the important part of failure is we learn. Without learning from our failures nothing happens, we repeat.

The shadow keeping us from being ourselves is nothing but our fear telling us things are impossible, nothing is impossible.

You can do anything, remember that.

 

How TM Allows You to Take Control of Your Life.

I’m four months on with TM and the main thing I’ve noticed is my ability to recognize myself.

Before TM I didn’t know who I was, what I wanted or whether I wanted anything, this includes to continue living.

I was in the darkest place I’ve ever been in my life, and that scared me enough to try something which some people I know saw as radical, Transcendental Meditation.

I’ve missed a couple of times, mostly because of conflicts with timing, airplane trips and being tired as hell.

Those times were when I noticed a difference, I’m not saying to stop doing it to see what I’m talking about, but I could tell the difference in my temperament and overall mood.

With TM I discovered who I am, what I want and where I want my life to be in a few years.

Before I was under the delusion that I could get myself out of any funk I got into, this includes depression, but I was wrong. My depression was the worst I’ve dealt with and because of that, I had to try TM.

In my first session I learned more about myself in those 20 minutes, than I had in the previous 38 years.

I found peace, for the first time in my life I felt like I could make myself better than I’d been before.

Along the way I’ve learned that focusing on myself, my writing and my family were more important than any distraction caused by my day job.

The delusions I had about my life before TM have been put into perspective as I didn’t know who I was or in what direction I was headed.

The delusion of our life is that it gets better without help, it rarely does.

I discovered my life is more than the person in the body, it’s about the way I want to help others, the things I want to teach others, like TM, and how I want those I care about to discover TM and its benefits.

TM has changed my views on life, family and creativity, but I know I’m on the correct path now, and that’s changed how I run my life instead of it running me.

TM allows you to take control of your life in a way you never thought possible.