Why does it feel like 10 steps takes 1000 steps of effort sometimes?
I don’t know but all I can do is keep going.
I can identify patterns in the nature of reality but they are so complex that the parameters evade me. There seems to be some consistency in things like hard work and prayer and “the law of attraction” or other spiritual teachings, but they don’t seem to be the only thing at play.
There have been times in my life where I knew exactly what to do. The result wasn’t always clear but I knew that the result would be one I was satisfied with, despite nothing about the situation revealing itself to be the right path. I just knew.
So far, following that gut instinct and keeping faith in my conviction is the one thing that seems to yield the desired results, and by desired results I just mean keeping life on the uptrend, more excitement, more love, more fun, more meaning.
The only constants in life that I can observe are those that I have found in these patterns, observations like this:
- the more excitement you channel into something focused, the more exciting the results will be
- The more fear you put into something, the more tainted the results will be. This doesn’t mean the results won’t be positive but that fear will ultimately have to be reckoned with.
- The subconscious is far far far more powerful than the conscious mind and more connected to everything else.
- people are story tellers who live inside their own stories. This applies to everyone. The only escape from this to detach from meaning.
- detaching from meaning is a kind of meditation that gives us perspective but I haven’t seen anyone benefit from the perusing a permanent detachment of all stories.
- there is beauty in stories and there is power in stories, and we grow by seeking the most beautiful, the most consistent and the most creative stories and pursuing them for ourselves, not forcing them on others.
- you can identify what story you are in and still participate in it.
- it would seem to me that the ideal state is to be both fully aware that you are in a story and fully immersed in the story. It seems this allows you to rewrite the story at will
- to do so without integrity will always come back to bite you or your efforts in the ass. Every single time.
- assuming you understand how it works can be very dangerous. Life will have a way of putting you in your place when you are not humble enough to admit that there are things beyond your comprehension.
These are observations from my own personal experience, merely a case study, but I can’t rule out that consciousness precedes matter and that there is in fact no objective reality, so my observations are far more relevant that the left brained academically trained atheist will ever admit.
These observations are at the crux of my faith, and I have learned it through experience, not through a book I read, although I do think there is much wisdom in certain religious passages and I totally respect people who find their answers in such texts and traditions.
In fact I think I share a deep connection with certain people of faith because there is an aspect of submission that I believe is central to helping us find balance and function as mature adults.
I feel that this lack of submission is one of the reasons why horrible things happen in the world and why so much is unreliable and corrupt.
I understand completely if that sounds uncomfortable or even wrong at first glance because if I submit, where is my freedom?
The freedom is in the fact that you have full freedom in what to submit to. Some submit to a god, and some to a lifestyle, some to humor and humanity and some to themselves. All submission is merely a submission to life itself, it’s a submission to the river. You can still swim in whatever way you’d like. You can build a raft or a cruise ship, but the river is going to keep flowing. The flow of the water is out of your control, at least in the most physical and immediate sense.
Perhaps there are methods where we can gain the power to influence the actual flow of the river, the flow of events of the world, but in order to achieve anything like that and achieve positive results would require submission, becoming as fluid and flexible and accepting as water.
This is something I struggle with, constantly trying to make the world something it isn’t, trying to exert my influence because I know I have some somewhere even if it’s hard to utilize at times.
But I can’t control the average rent of apartments in my city, the same way I can’t control the fact that, as far as we understand, human biological life is finite. Perhaps there is a way to reverse aging, and I am free to pursue that, but I must submit to the answer for such equations isn’t something I can pick up at the convenience store.
Submission is the ability to enjoy life even knowing you will die. It’s being able to look death in the face and allowing yourself to be scared without completely dismissing the possibility of something better on the other side, or maybe just something different.
It’s being able to have your convictions about how to life life without expecting others to do it the same way. If you manage to change anyone through your example, it was part of the flow. If you want to impose your ideas on others, that’s “playing god”, it is not part of the flow, it’s you wanting things to be the way they are not.
I write this to myself now as I find myself eager to do things without receiving the proper signs that it’s time. I see an opportunity ahead of me but the conditions don’t seem to be those that give me that feeling of intuition, like I know this is time to take a leap of faith.
I may get that feeling upon more information or certain developments but I cannot deny the fact that it’s not quite time to take this leap. Not today at 15:23. Now last night when this was swirling around in my head. Maybe in an hour or a week or a year, but not now.
I need to acknowledge the flow and follow my excitement. My excitement is leading me to make more things outside of my comfort zone and explore different mediums of expression until I’ve found a means of creating the kind of community environment that I envision. My excitement is healing my heart and my body to the absolutely best of my ability and seeing how my life changes around me.
Let’s see what happens and maybe next time I will give you a more concrete explanation of what is going on that brought this up.
Nothing in this post is meant to convince anyone of anything or sway anyone in any way. I am just trying to express my own perspective and explore some of the potential implications for my own benefit or for anyone who may already share even similar or overlapping ideas
And an ad I made to promote Hive:
How Blogging Changed My Life