Breath

A belief that my life up until this very moment has helped culminate, which before this present moment I did not have the clarity to formulate into concise verbiage, has managed to conglomerate within the vast abyss of my mind, into a manageable sentence. Perhaps it is still too verbose, but my enthusiasm for its newly born comprehensible form betrays my better senses to sustain until polished. 

So, without getting into details or explanations, yet, here it is:

The quality of your life; physical, emotional, mental, and beyond; is directly proportionate to the consistency of depth and length of your natural, unemployed breaths throughout all your conscious moments. 

P.S. I want to live here. 

A letter for you

Dear friend, 

I want to tell you about a time in my life when I felt completely stuck. Feeling helpless and fundamentally flawed. In a limbo of knowing but not experiencing. Interestingly it came about after some wonderful realizations about life. Insights that I thought would take me to where I want to be. But I was missing something. I want to share that here with you. 

I reached a point where I understood that what other people do isn't a reflection of me but of them. On top of that I recognized I, and I alone, attract every experience in my life, good and bad, by my vibrational attitude I daily emit. So when unpleasant things would happen to me I wouldn't get upset at others or the circumstances, but at myself. "I attracted this in some way, so the fault lies with me", I'd say to myself. 

In a way this insight was worse than before I understood these things, because back then at least I felt a sense of innocence and righteousness. But after the realizations I just constantly felt guilty. Guilty that I was still attracting unwanted things, that I should be better at this; that I know too much to be anxious, self-conscious, afraid. 

It wasn't until almost two years later that I realized the grace I was giving to others I wasn't extending to myself. What changed for me was finally letting go of what I thought I should be, do, have, and accepting my "mishaps" and my "flaws." Just doing this has given me the wonderful sense of knowing who I am and knowing what I want. Which fuels a sense of worthiness and confidence I've never before experienced. 

And so my hope with this post is that it helps you realize that we are all innocent — you included. 

You are doing the best you can, and so is everyone else in their own world. You are enough, you can be, do, have, whatever it is you want. You just simply have to let go of the word "should", and lovingly believe in yourself. Accept you for all of you. It sounds easy, and it is, but we put so many conditions in our way that not until they are fulfilled will we finally accept ourselves. But you can't accept yourself in the future, you can only do it now. If you keep delaying accepting yourself, waiting to achieve this or acquire that, you will always find things to put in front of you before you allow you to accept yourself. 

I'm telling you, you can do this right now. It takes trust in The Universe, God, Life, to let go of trying to control the things in your life in order to get what you want. It takes closing your eyes and falling backwards trusting that Life will not only catch you, but wrap Its arms around you with peace of mind and abundance of all you need and want. 

If you can do this now, wonderful. If not now, it just means you don't yet want to trust that Life will always provide a way, that's ok. 

Once you do let go of control and accept yourself, there is a chance you will wake tomorrow and feel like your old self, but that's just old patterns of thinking. It takes a little bit of time and focus to shift things that have been running on the same neural paths for years. But you'll be surprised at how fast your thoughts will begin to feel like they are on your side again. Yes, you will have days when you just can't seem to change the negativity around – that's ok. It's all part of the process. Keep letting go, keep trusting in Life, keep refocusing on things of positivity. 

As long as your peace comes from your trust in Life and not external circumstances, you will feel invincible. You will want to take score and look at your external life to see if it's bearing the fruit you think it should, but do your best not to. Keep practicing unconditionally trusting that Life always works out for you. And very soon your life will transform to where everything around you supports your feelings of well being and blessings. 

People will become attracted to you in more ways than you can understand right now. Opportunities to make your dreams come true will keep "coincidently" popping up in your days. Your idea of who you are and where you're going will become more and more clear. Your worries will fade until they are distant memories that you deliberately choose not to visit. You will finally feel a sense of Home that you haven't felt since the 90's or childhood. Life will feel right again. 

All because you chose not to delay a day longer and finally, once and for all, wholly and truly accept yourself, and practiced every moment of everyday accepting yourself. Until eventually you fall in love with yourself. And when that happens you simultaneously fall in love with everyone in the world and everything. Love becomes everything. And everything can be seen in the framework of different degrees of love. Love is now the language you speak and you understand events and people as phenomena of love. 

Like how the scientists know there is no actual source of "cold" but rather an absence of heat. And "darkness" is only lack of light. As that with love, all is love. You will see there are degrees of how much love is being allowed to flow in every given circumstance. And anything that feels bad isn't actually bad, but just needs more love. People will become like innocent children in your eyes and blame and criticism will feel completely pointless. You will treat yourself the same way, and when you are on your side, the whole world can't stop you. And in fact, the whole world will conspire to help you. Because the world is waiting for you to believe in yourself. 

You can do it. 

Let go of control.

Trust in Life. 

Accept yourself completely. 

Practice every moment in lovingly accepting yourself. 

Be easy with yourself on bad days when you can't seem to shake it off. 

Keep practicing. 

Watch your life transform. 

I believe in you. 

Now it's time you do. 

Love,

Bart

Nature

I find that Nature hardens the exterior of humans and softens the interior. 

Civilization softens the exterior and hardens the interior. 

Balance is beauty. 

Religion

Story time.

I was raised in a religious home. Being homeschooled for a significant time most of my friends and social outings were from the church. It was a wonderful environment that fundamentally fostered a commitment to loving one another and to deal with each other through compassion. I attribute religion's reinforcing nature for the retention of my best qualities through adolescent's transforming times. Though today I don't identify with any religion. Not to say I fully disagree with it nor have any negativity with anyone who does. Period. In fact I believe when practiced best, religion can still be a powerfully harmonious and collaborative agent in society. Something society desperately needs. I will say however religion has an inherent limit, though depending on the congregation the limit can be reduced. The limit is as limiting as the congregation's inability to recognize all peoples outside its beliefs are the same as those within. It's an interesting phenomenon when religion accepts all who wish to join, but believe(though may never explicitly state but is nonetheless there) that all who believe otherwise are separate and or wrong. To the extent this limit recedes, the congregation abides closer to the ethos of the religion which was inspired by the teacher in the first place. However once fully erased, so will the necessity for a specific label of practice or particular community. And here is where we arrive at the statements in this photo. There isn't any real separation. There is only love.

P.S. I appreciate the communal value of sharing similar spiritual practices and all the cycles of learning and teaching that thrives within religion. Perhaps this was the original purpose of religion: Sharing in similarities. Not judging differences, whether explicitly or in our hearts.    

Emotion Control = Evolution of Man

Having control of our emotions takes practice like everything else. The more we practice the better we get. How I practice is by letting go of all my concerns, trusting Life will always direct me to things better than my present understanding of what I think I want. Here detachment occurs and I am liberated from fear. With fear absent an abundance of mental energy is freed up. I use this energy to constantly pay attention to how I feel throughout the day. When I'm feeling light, content, happy, anything positive, I know I'm improving. 

When I feel tension, concern, anything negative start to creep in (this is where the practice comes to play) I direct my thoughts to anything that feels better than what I'm currently thinking. And I mean anything. It doesn't have to be related and most of the time it isn't. If you believe that Life Delivers To You Whatever You Consistently Focus On, and accept the truism that Everything We Want, We Want Because We Think We Will FEEL Better In The Having Of It, then the only reasonable course of action is to focus on things that Feel good. 

So by redirecting my focus from something that doesn't feel good to something that does, I am now controlling the direction of my emotions. If I already feel good but want to feel great, enthusiastic, and inspired then I will gradually shift my attention from my starting point of feeling good to something that feels closer to my end point. I'll keep thinking thoughts that are in the direction of my end point until I achieve an emotional(sometimes even bodily) response. There I know I've increased my level of emotion and can then think thoughts that are closer still to my end point. Within moments to minutes I am feeling inspired and passionate. With practice this becomes easier to do with less focus.

Two important notes:

1. When I realize I'm feeling less than I'd like to and so begin shifting my attention, I don't reach for the best of the best thought but instead a thought that FEELS better relative to what I'm already thinking. Intuitively it makes sense to want to feel great if you feel bad. But our minds usually don't suddenly change from not so good to outstanding. We need a gradual shift. Almost like coaxing our minds bit by bit to better feelings. Tame that beast! With gentleness. 

2. To get to a place of detachment, it can be difficult if our untamed minds are over active with concerns and jumping from one thought to another uncontrollably (which was the case for me when I started this work). The quickest and easiest way to get a handle on our minds is by getting into a comfy position in a quiet place, sit still, close our eyes, breathe naturally, and keep redirecting our attention to our breath or simply stated, meditating. The more we do this the quieter and controllable our minds become. Once we have a handle of quieting our mind, directing thoughts become a thousand times easier. 

Summary: 

To control our emotions we let go of concerns, trust in Life, pay attention to how we feel, all day focus on things that feel good and when we catch our minds drifting to negativity redirect our thoughts to better feeling ones(gradual shifts), repeat at every opportunity. 

If directing thoughts is difficult, learn to quiet the mind. Quieting our minds is easiest through meditating. Google meditation for techniques that work for you! 

If you're wondering why put in all the effort to control our emotions answer this: Why do I want to do, be, and have all the things I desire? If you can get to the bottom most reason as to why then you'll understand.  

Happiness = controlled thoughts

“You must learn to let go of your fears and insecurities, and instead let your emotions remain within your control, rather than dictating your actions or reactions”*

I can control my emotions by controlling my thoughts. 

Emotions = thoughts + feelings**

*Excerpt From: Entourage, Secret. “Third Circle Theory: Purpose Through Observation.” 

**Independent. Remains constant. We will always feel for things and circumstances. Cannot cut feeling from life: unhealthy, inhuman. 

Intentional Association is a Key to Happiness

We are beginning to develop a sense(not just an understanding) that the reality of our emotions are not based, fed, or sourced from our experience. 

Our happiness and our sorrow are not caused by successes and failures. 

These experiences virtually have no influence on our emotions except for the feelings we've allowed(however unaware) ourselves to habitually associate them with over the years. 

It's not what happens to us that shapes our feelings.

It's how we choose to shape our feelings to what happens to us.

This determines our emotions, and then our attitudes(which are habitual emotions), our character(habitual attitudes), and ultimately our Life(summation of our character and our behavior).  

Implied method:

Change how we associate feelings to experience = change our lives