Lead yourself to where you want to be.

We often see the person in the mirror as a differnt person than the one we’re living with.

We don’t see the person others see.

We ignore the accolades, pats on the back and the well dones.

We think that something may be wrong with these people. They can’t be talking about us, they don’t see us that way, they must some sort of defect.

What if we get past that and see ourselves as better than what we think of who we are? What then?

When we get past the doubt, hate and hurt of who we think we are and delve into the world of what everyone else sees, then we’ll be structuring our lives for better things.

Each day we have a voice in our head, but we can choose to ignore the doubt in our head and push through to the next moment.

Each moment in our lives is something we accept or ignore. 

If we accept the torture of hating who we are we’re finished, but if we choose to believe those around us, we can live the life we were always meant to live.

If you’re not living the life you want, what’s stopping you?

Why do you listen to the voice in your head?

Remember you control what happens in your life. You alone control the puppet strings.

Which way will you lead yourself? To greatness or mediocrity?

Breaking the Limits Of Who We Are.

We inspire, create and live by a set of limits placed upon us by those around us.

These limits define who we are, what we do and how we live.

When we get past these limits and realize we were taught wrong, it disrupts the life we had and can send us over the edge.

The most curious thing about TM is discovering things about myself I’ve believed since I was child. Things I was told by parents, teachers and school guidance counselors have turned out to be false.

I was told I couldn’t do something based on my grades, where I grew up or what I believed.

A few weeks after beginning TM, I had a revelation about my life and the limits I’d been taught.

This made me think about who I was and afterward I knew I’d discovered who I was and what I wanted out of life and it had nothing to do with the beliefs of those I’d been surrounded with as a youth.

I saw in those early weeks of TM my future self and where I wanted my life to go.

Our life is set by the limits of what we’re told, what we’re taught, but when we discover the falsehood of those limits and begin to understand there are no limits, it sets us free and helps us discover a part of ourselves we never believed could exist.

This part knows no limits, it accepts nothing but the absence of limits and when we choose to follow it, we’ll understand limits are placed to protect us from failure, but the greatest gift is to fail.

It’s only in failure we truly learn the mistakes we’d made and with learning we see the reason behind the failure and change things to never make the same mistake again.

Our life is short, but living without the limits placed upon us is the way to truly understand ourselves and our life’s failures.

When I saw the limits placed upon me, I knew something had to change and I’m beginning the changes.

The first was last week. By moving the blog to once a week I’m able to focus my energy to other things and break the limits of trying to complete two posts and maintain my other responsibilities.

In the next few weeks there will be minor things changed, but they will be negligible.

For next week I plan on having my wife—who’s been doing TM for a couple weeks already—write a post on the blog.

I’ll be doing other things with other types of media and will keep things going on the blog, but the posts will stay at once a week.

Transcendental Meditation, Blogging and Changing Priorities.

We see our creative side all the time.

It comes up in conversation when we least expect it, and sometimes, though not often, we find ourselves within the realm of finding writing and creativity that astounds us and amplifies what we believed in ourselves.

It’s been nearly a year since I began TM and though I’ve talked more about how it’s changed my life concerning depression, there is another way it’s changed me.

I’ve been writing a blog for 10 years, and though Delusions of Ink isn’t my first blog, it’s the one that I’ve been able to help people with and because of that the confidence I have in myself and my writing has grown.

A year ago I seriously thought I would stop writing.

I mean this seriously. I was going to delete my blog, all the stories I’ve written, the novels I’ve finished and quit writing.

When I began TM, and I began figuring out what I wanted to do with my writing, I never thought I would keep blogging, nor that I would help readers with their depression issues or have my blog featured on TM.org.

Writing is something I’ve loved since I was a child. I made up stories, wrote some of them down, but when I was in high school I began writing a lot more and somewhere between 18 and 22 I got lost and didn’t write.

After I quit college after my first year and spent more time reading, I learned to write again, though it was in baby steps.

I wrote a novel, though it was bad, and finished a second a year after that. But I haven’t finished a novel in a couple of years and I feel I need to do that.

I’ve written short stories, blog posts, but no finished novels. I’ve started a dozen or more, but I’ve always been stuck in the middle.

I started a novel shortly after beginning TM and it’s been sitting on my hard drive for too long and now that I’ve found my voice in blogging and have helped people find their voices through TM, it’s time to reduce my time commitments from Delusions of Ink for a little while and get some words on the page.

My reasons for this are many, first: I have day job commitments and family commitments which I must meet and along with plans to move in the next six months, finding the time to do all the things I want to this year while keeping my sanity will prove hard. I want to do at least a post a week, and more than likely will, but that’s all I’ll be doing.

I would like to thank all of my readers and especially the administrators of TM.org for their faith in my writing, especially when I had none, and for giving me a chance to help people with my words.

 

Deniability, Transcendental Meditation and Discovering Yourself.

It fell from the truck, rolling, flipping and resting on the edge of the water. It lay there against the shore, the water pushing it lightly against the bank until the rush of new water pushed it into the stream.

It floated down the river, its shape changed mildly by the water until it drifted below the surface.

Walking through life, we get caught in the pull of things which aren’t under our control and they push us and pull us against other forces until we see the pull of one thing as our life’s purpose.

I always believed I should write, but I never knew I’d write something which people would read the way Delusions of Ink has.

I fell from the highest I’d been. A new child, a great wife, but I wasn’t the person I believed myself to be. I was only pretending to be that person. My facade was I was great husband and father, though I’ve learned that I was much harsher than I should have been.

When we discover we’re not the person we’ve been telling ourselves we slip from the bank of life, slide into the roaring river and float until we’ve become waterlogged and slip under the rising tide.

When I slipped under I didn’t know how to get to the surface. I was afraid of becoming someone other than I believed myself to be and I felt that changing who I was wasn’t the problem, everyone else should change to accommodate me.

When I began TM, I wasn’t aware yet. I wasn’t functioning the way I am today.

I was depressed, suicidal and I wanted my wife and kids to be happy. I felt they weren’t happy with me and suicide would fix that. I believed they’d be better without me.

Nearly a year after I wanted to end my life, I’m reaching people through the blog and through what I write. I’ve had confirmation of this and to have someone say you’d helped them is the greatest gift I could receive this holiday season.

The holidays are when suicides spike. So, when you see someone who doesn’t seem like themselves, please ask them if their okay.

If you have a friend who’s recently divorced, broken up with partner or someone who has no one, invite them to your party, they’ll be grateful and you may save a life.

If you’re having trouble this holiday please call the suicide hotline – 1(800) 273-8255

Have a safe Holiday season and Happy New Year.

Brian

Transcendental Meditation amid a Torrent

It started in Houston, a small drizzle, preceded by a ridiculously bumpy landing.
From Houston, a layover of 45 minutes and a decent sandwich from an airport vendor, we boarded for New Orleans.
It was our first vacation without the kids and we’d she’d only seen The Crescent City in a mad rush through the Quarter and didn’t see the beauty the city held, only what at 19, she was really allowed by her parents.
Arriving at our hotel too early for check-in, we left our luggage with their bellperson and headed for Jackson Square.
Stepping on the street, we saw the usual New Orleans panhandlers, though there were less than there’d been when I visited the city 17 years prior.
The chill of an early spring rain and the smell of spices and Creole seasonings drifted from the restaurants we passed.
Our stomachs were soon growling and though we weren’t quite hungry we perused menus searching for dinner, but nothing sounded good and we made our way to Jackson Square, it was then as the chill and scents of New Orleans ran through our senses the heavens opened.
It wasn’t the rain we were used to. It was a southern downpour.
We ran from awning to awning and sidewalk to sidewalk dodging the torrent unleashed upon us.
We stepped in puddles as our clothes became drenched and then we decided to sit, eat and take in the flavors of New Orleans.
I’d only been doing TM a week, but after our meal we returned to our hotel for my second meditation of the day.
My wife thought it was a phase at that point, or that I couldn’t be experiencing the things I told her, but now that it’s been months later, she understands that it’s not a fluke and she’s closer to learning the TM technique.