Invoking Change/Being the Center of Your Universe, the Benevolent God

We all have a capability to change those around us, and in ways that are usually for the better. What I mean is everybody is thirsty, but only some people know how to get water.  If you happen to figure out a way of getting water, and you notice how nice life is when you aren't constantly thirsty, the last thing you want to do is slap a patent and your name on the "water-collecting method" you have come up with. People don't want to have to thank you for something that should be innate knowledge, or acknowledge you every time they go to fulfill a basic necessity(which nearly every thing you hold on to in life is, after long enough). Claiming to have invented a form of meditation or some esoteric breathing/grounding technique is the same as claiming to invent peeing or standing up straight: be honest with yourself and everyone, you just discovered it! If the system was there beforehand, and just needed to be moved a certain way to work, that is discovery within the self, and should be treated as such.
There are many different things to thirst after in life, and many more ways of going about quenching them. When you discover a new awesome thing, the first thing you may want to do afterwards is to tell every single person you know about it! Go to them and tell them what you did and try to get them to do it as well! Now, to somebody who is suffering from a lack of whatever it is that you now have, going to them and telling them that you now have it and how great it feels to have it doesn't always come across on the other end as an awesome thing. More often than not, it invokes envy or just anger depending on what the thing is, because that is what deficiencies create space for in the self. We all want to help everyone we can, but preaching is not the answer to solve everybody's problems, especially if they don't even know the cause themselves. Pointing out the cause is not your job in their life. They need to find the cause on their own, or they will never be able to find the strength to live the solution. They will get there the same way you got there, and we know this through reincarnation and multidimensionality. We know this because of the transience of information and the permanence of memories, and we know this because we are all connected. Any amount of outward egotism simply pushes others away, whether it is pointing out to somebody that they have an unhealthy habit, or even thinking that their life would be better if they would just listen to you about X or Y. Ultimately the only thing you can do for them is shine a little brighter and do the one thing you do best: live. Your life, if what you claim is true, should stand as an example on its own, and you don't need to say anything about it, and you don't even need to think about it, because if it is true, it simply is.
In the same way disease is contagious, so is health. By living a positive, healthy lifestyle, you shed healthy energy on everybody around you, You live by example, you don't push others, you do not judge, and you are rewarded energy. You cycle this energy everywhere you go, and share energy with every individual you encounter. Judgement and unhealthy practice, sin as it were, strips you of this energy, you share less, shine dimmer, make less impact. Of course, you can always build yourself up again, but pay mention to when you notice yourself slipping, falling into bad habit, embracing that which is 'not it', because it will affect everybody around you. Keep your head up, keep on trying, and remember to smile always :) Hold yourself to the highest standard, in every endeavor, and every challenge, so that you can always grow, and carry the world with you.
Love and Light, hope I wasn't too preachy today, Namaste!

What Do You Mean By That?

A perfectly reasonable question, that any sensible and worthwhile person would answer when asked respectfully. Language, written or spoken, is simply an abstraction used to convey deeper meaning behind it. The definitions of words, if strictly taken, would never be able to convey the meanings of every subjective experience, and thus if our words had strict "this means this and only this" definitions, we would require several million times the number of words we have currently, since the strict definitions would eventually have to specify the exact complete context they are being used in. It's a good thing that this isn't the case, with English, and really any modern language that I know of.
The words that we use are very flexible in their definition. While we may think of something like  "plane" as describing the giant metal people-carriers with the huge turbine engines, the term "plane" could also be used to describe things that move through the air with wings. Or really things that have controlled movement through the air in general. The only thing that stops the abstraction of it's definition is the fact that there are other words to describe different kinds of "planes" with different attributes. We wouldn't call a helicopter a "plane" because we know that a helicopter uses vertical fan-like structures to lift and move itself, and thus the definition of the word "plane" was truncated, and the abstraction used to define something that flies using fan-like blades was rededicated to the term "copter", or something like that. We created all-purpose abstractions for concepts first, and broke them down later into more specific use-cases to describe more complex ideas, like iterations of detail into a fractal of information. You only need to go so far before the objective thing you are referring to is conveyed and the information the two parties are focusing on synchronizes.
I am writing this about abstract concepts that are very important to my understanding of the world, and the words I use to convey them. Somehow, specific groups have "claimed" the meanings of words to their own degree of abstraction, when in truth the word is of a much higher and broader abstraction than what they use it for. One example of this is "ecstasy". The word "ecstasy" refers to a feeling, which can only be described by the word used to define it. It is sort of a joyful contentness, a feeling of interconnectedness with all things, a loving warmth, all wrapped up into one. Now, ecstasy as an experience can be achieved in many ways: deep meditation, MDMA, tantric sex, ecstatic dancing, or simply high-awareness moment to moment living. However, at some point, the word "Ecstasy" was misused to describe a more detailed construct, like MDMA, and the meaning was lowered to simply describe 'the feeling of being on MDMA', instead of the proper connection, which is that the feeling of being on MDMA is described as "ecstasy". Unfortunately, since the only exposure most people have to the word "ecstasy" is when describing the drug with the street name "ecstasy", it became a bit of a 'bad word' somewhere along the line. This is just one example of how lowering the abstraction of a word can cause definition to be lost, and eventually cause certain feelings to become unconveyable by the words of a language. It happens all the time, and as someone who sees the more abstract meanings, it is our job to use words in all of their proper contexts without the fear that we would be misinterpreted as describing the lower uses. Another such example of this is "heaven", but everybody needs to find the true definitions of this word on their own. It's much more subjective than it's made out to be, more of a feeling or "vibe" than a place or goal, but that is all I will say about it here, since "heaven" you need to define for yourself.
A few terms I would like to personally 'raise' the meanings of here and now are reincarnation, multi-dimensionality, and consciousness.
Consciousness, a term to describe anything that is conscious, anything that makes decisions, interacts with the world around it on its own accord. I would take it a step further to say anything that can stop interacting with the world around it. The concept is much more widely applicable than anything that could be described logically, since consciousness means entities of life, beings of subjective experience, but should never be bound to single iterations of such things. Humans have consciousness, animals have consciousness, plants have consciousness, minerals and crystals have consciousness, organs and tissues have consciousness, cells have consciousness, molecules have consciousness, atoms have consciousness, planets have consciousness, stars have consciousness, star systems and galaxies have consciousness, and ultimately universes have consciousness. Interacting your consciousness with theirs is an entirely different story, but the definition should hold.
Multi-dimensionality should refer to how consciousness interact with others. A multi-dimensional construct should map, from the present moment, all possible dimensions(decisions) that consciousness can take from the given point, using one of the parameters as a constant. Even in mathematics, graphing of a function shows how from one point(consciousness) in time(the constant dimension being iterated through), the point really only has the decision to move forward or backward, and since it is a fixed function, it has already been to one of them to get to where it is(otherwise it would be a singularity(only exists in one moment of time and none other) or a constant(constant function) and therefore be independent of time, making the graphing process a bit futile). Abstracting this(shakily defined) definition for any consciousness, from the point, the present moment, the multiverse is every possible universe accessible from the point where consciousness currently exists(consider a universe to be a screenshot of all matter and energy in existence in any moment), where time is only the abstraction used to define previous universes passed through to get to the current one, and the universes one wishes to pass through next, usually to achieve some kind of state of being or feeling. Multi-dimensionality defines this construct of subjective existence. Of course, the explanation of it gets a little hairy since the concept exists just on the brink between duality and unity, where time becomes more of an abstraction than a real dimension, and the present moment is the only moment, but other moments were known to exist previously and more moments are known to come, so it too is something that the definition needs to be understood on your own to find it in its greatest and most powerful abstraction, I just hope this helped.
Finally, reincarnation. Every group that has defined reincarnation would likely agree that meaning comes from within, and so should the meaning for this. Reincarnation is how universal consciousness, when it creates lesser entities, splits itself and interacts with itself in real time. Subjectively, a single consciousness may experience one lifetime as one creature, and the next as a totally different one, and the order of what is experienced is determined by other laws and such, but the fact itself, the term reincarnation, is the observation that this is what happens at death: life. One life ends, another begins. Perhaps in a different place, a different time, a different creature, a different planet, a different dimension, all of these things are unimportant to the observation that somehow, seamlessly, life takes a new form, and consciousness inhabits that form, and takes on its parameters, and understands its walls, and in doing so, must forget its own universal nature. Reincarnation refers to nothing more than the connection of the end of one life to the beginning of another, like a point on a circle, or a cross-section of a mobius strip. Attempting to define it by any of the laws by which life  goes about this cycle takes away from the richness of the definition.
These are terms that are used in many contexts in spiritual practice, feel free to use them whenever they feel right, as that is how the words want to be used. As long as the meanings and concepts get across, words are happy to be used in any way they can be.

Flip It, Call It, Science Face Up

The world has a new religion, and it's been in development for quite a while. Unlike religions of the past, this one is built off of numbers and figures, it obeys all laws of logic and more, and despite our limited grasp and capability of understanding all things that are, ultimately this religion can develop to understand exactly half of it(which is a LOT). We call this religion science. It is a religion since religions are simply guides on how to understand and deal with the world around you, and also on a higher level, to guide the organization of people in a productive way, as all religions do. It also has many counterarguments based within its own findings that refute and "disprove" all other religions, as all religions do. It is a wonderful thing, but is also probably the most volatile religion the world has ever suffered through, since those who follow it(and it's hard NOT to follow at least some part of it, since its explanations are so all-encompassing) historically persecute those who don't(albeit in a slightly different manner than other religions have).
Science as a religions is based on nature,  and natural patterns and abstractions such as numbers(ultimately just a placeholder abstraction for difference) and many, many, many observable laws of nature can be understood and reasoned with and even applied in new contexts through this numeric understanding of reality. Of course, I use the term "Science" abstractly by its primal definition to be all things definable and understood by logic. By applying the laws of logic and interactions and relations between numbers, you can learn a law, calculate it to a semi-concrete value, and use this value to apply the law to new concepts and ideas(such as using gravity and momentum equations to figure out how much fuel a vehicle would need to burn in order to achieve escape velocity from a larger body). All fields of science have their own natural patterns they are built upon: physics has numbers, chemistry has elements(also a concept based upon numeric relations and patterns, like the periodic table for arranging relations between different electrically charged particles and how their interactions correlate to changing the number of sub-particles the particles in question consist of), etc. All of the fields of science are bullet proof within themselves because they are based on these numeric relations and laws, and thus they all support one-another and patterns in one field can be applied in other fields( such as our rough equations for gravitic force between two bodies and the electric force between charged particles, which is more or less the same equation/relation in a different dimension(/scale maybe? Dim. Isn't really the right word) with a different constant, and shows a parallel between how different kinds of forces occur), and since all of these things are based on logic, they don't logically interfere with one another. Thus, it is a field that one uses to understand the world around them and relate to it in a meaningful, accurate, and applicable way.
Science also conflicts with other religions, as anybody who knows the story of Galileo would be quite aware of. When other religions dominated society, scientific study was, you could say, frowned upon, because it provided a means of understanding the world in a different way(think Roman Catholic Church and the Dark Ages, when so much information was lost, we may still be behind informationally speaking what was known before it occurred, but have since convinced ourselves otherwise due to advances in technology and harnessing industrial power). Now, in those days, heretics were shamed by the masses, persecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and often killed for their blasphemy against the commonly agreed upon "lens" for reality. In short, the dominant religion sought to preserve itself, so it constantly persecuted those who worshipped otherwise, to maintain a "louder voice" in the world, so to speak. The way science slipped through was by somehow denoting itself as something that was not religious at all, and it was especially simple because of how much the church deviated over thousands of years from its natural roots into a means of control through its own web of self-supporting concepts, which in those days was as creditable as logic is today. Due to this deviation, a general idea that religion and nature no longer had reconciliation allowed science to take the placeholder as it's own self-defined field of understanding the world, and able to gather followers from other religions without heavily conflicting enough concepts that would require the converted to keep their old religion along with the new one. (This also has to do with religions as we know them defining spirituality, which science has yet to sufficiently explain, and instead refutes since spirituality does not follow the laws of logic, but is still based in its own set of natural observable laws regardless, which is why I consider it the other half of reality that science cannot really touch, at least not yet). This way, religion was maintained and science was established and spread throughout the world. It even had it's own means of persecution, which target the individual from within rather than from without.
We have a way of 'quantifying' ones grasp of science, and it is a very powerful thing. Our society has developed to where the masses of people identify themselves ultimately and in some cases totally by this idea, and it causes just as many drawbacks and hindrances in terms of human development and grasp of information as a whole as previous methods of developmental interference between religions, and we call this value intelligence. Intelligence, especially judgements of one's own intelligence against others, is only a drawback, since it keeps self-esteem for those who have been deemed as non-intellectuals at an all-time low, and prevents the creation and flow of ideas from occurring from as much as 90% of the race as a whole(I made that figure up, but imagine how many books have been written by gas-station clerks and you can see what I'm getting at). Of course, the devout are still rewarded, as they always have been, and a lot of the time, the most intelligent are also the most wealthy or privileged in a given society( some exceptions to this, as there always are, remembering how much murder, war, and famine happened at the hands of popes should indicate that this margin of exception is nothing new ). Now, since we place one's value to society in intelligence, and we tell some people their intelligence is quite low( as it may be, we don't exactly know quantum physics from birth ), a general idea that those with low intelligence are not useful developed, damaging self-esteem,  and creating a caste system in the modern day, which still propogates since science has convinced people that it's 50% is actually the whole pie, and those who can't understand any part of the 50% cannot grow or develop and thus become stuck in their growth and kinda "grow up dumb", often admitting to this as if it is something they cannot change. Now, to understand what I mean by this halt of development, consider someone learning multiplication, such as multiplication by hand between two three-digit numbers.(this is the entire next paragraph, and is somewhat lengthy and exhaustive, so if you would like to skip it, I will summarize it at the beginning of the next, but the explanation is as follows)
The "scientific-linear" way of approaching this 123x321, is to add 123 to itself 321 times, which yields the answer 39483 after 321 additions. Since single-digit multiplication is rather simple to perform, someone attempting to calculate this could use a sort of "scientific-quadratic" approach, by multiplying the first digit of the second number across the digits of the first number, saving that value somewhere, adding a place value 0, and doing the same for the next digit of the second number, and upon completing all digits, adding the final list of saved values to itself, giving you your result of 39483 exponentially faster than the "linear" approach( these have been named by the way they define the concepts applied. Linear meaning it uses multiplication which is defined as a long string of additions. Quadratic meaning it uses long-multiplication, which is multiple multiplications followed by a much shorter string of additions ). To somebody who doesn't know what I'm talking about, these may sound incredibly complicated and partially meaningless due to the exhaustive definition, but of course I am defining the vertical method of multiplication I (and probably you as well) was taught in elementary arithmetic. However, this explanation is difficult and getting hung up on details of this process makes this process very difficult for some people to learn, especially those who are less "math-minded" and logically ground. Yet this is the method we are taught, and thus it is gospel, and those who don't understand the gospel are held back. Now, there is another form of multiplication, which I will call "visual multiplication" that isn't "Science", as it has been defined per-say. In this method, you simple draw groupings of diagonal lines for each digit value, with the first number going diagonally right and the second numbers' lines going diagonally left, so that all lines of one value cross all the lines from the other value, and you simply count the number of times they cross, grouping these intersections vertically, and the number of intersections going from left to right is your solution 39483(carrying for values larger than 9 of course). In a simpler example, such as 12x13, you would have three lines going diagonally to the right, grouped 1 then 2 top to bottom, and four lines going diagonally to the left, grouped 1 then 3 bottom to top(or from left to right if that helps, I'll try to include a picture, for reasons I will explain shortly). By grouping the intersections vertically, you end up with, from left to right, 1, 5(3+2), and 6, with 156 being your answer. 

This visual approach isn't as logical as the others and is much more difficult to explain concretely using just words, and thus is a more irrational(as in rational vs irrational numbers)than the others. I could literally go on forever with this wordy explanation and potentially not reach a point where the concept I am describing makes concrete sense with closed logic. It is not gospel, as far as I know, it is not taught in schools, and those who fail to grasp the quadratic approach of delinearizing the problem are held back and ultimately labelled as less intelligent than their peers for not grasping multiplication. Despite them being able to multiply the two numbers completely using the visual method, their intelligence would be graded upon their grasp of the "vertical method" and they would be deemed "incapable of long multiplication", for not "showing their work" the way it is outlined in gospel. Of course, this is an anecdote of my life in Elementary school(where I was luckily not held back) and I pray they have corrected their standards of intellect and grasp in the last 15 years, but from the to-be teachers I know, it hasn't changed much, and the visually minded continue to be labelled as unintelligent and their ideas continue to be scrutinized and defeated in an infantile form for not obeying the exact same logic as Sciences initially. Ideas born of another doctrine are defeated, more than often using explanations based in the closed logic of the more wide-spread religion, as religions do. Now, this was a childishly simple example, but I hope the meaning got across: science refuses to acknowledge or have any respect whatsoever for anything that is not-science. This is a problem. This problem brings us to the not-science, the speculation, the grains of salt:

There are many things innate to us that cannot be defined by science or broken down and quantified, and thus in the modern day they are devalued and often denied to exist at all. A simple example of this is love: innate connection to all things, acts of selflessness that defy economic reason. Love is too innate to us to be defeated by science, but it still cannot be explained and en masse is simply ignored as an important force of creation, to the extent that some doubt it's existence at all. Another thing science can define yet cannot quantify is feeling and sensation, which is just as important to life and survival as thought, and yet is highly marginalized to the point that people doubt their own feelings and instead follow the thoughts of others, more often than not to sadness and their own oblivion( that statement is also an exaggeration but I hope the point got across ). Finally, something science could never EVER explain, by definition, the miracle. Miracles are defined by their lack of imminent possibility and logical orthodoxy, and thus as things that deft science. Those who deny the existence of miracles also defy their possibility, and as a result will never experience one since their life-path will only ever walk within the 50% of the pie that is Science, where miracles simply do not happen, for reason of predictability, and the reproducability of the status quo. Imagination, creativity, dreaming, "interdimensional" travel and out-of-body experience are all things that cannot be explained or brought about by science(lack of reproducability, etc), and thus are often denied entirely from existence. Those who go against science nowadays are persecuted heavily by those devout and somewhat blinded by it. They are labelled as either unintelligent or crazy and this is the true spectrum of their grasp of the other half of reality, yet the science-mind convinces them to be ashamed of it. A faction of science in a highly incomplete field has convinced people that they carry something with them from birth that is eternal to all their life and everything they attach to it is something that cannot be changed. Intelligence, happiness-depression, body weight, mental conditions, and even economic standing(aka relation to scarcity) have all been defined as part of our eternal "genetics" and the general idea about genetics is that it cannot be changed. They find a gene that correlates to unintelligence, they tell you about it, you are convinced that intellectuality isn't for you 'by your nature', and thus you end up not pursuing education, thus you do not learn the sciences, thus you are by definition unintelligent, and you end up in the corresponding economic class. Your genes are passed on to your offspring, he is convinced of the same thing, and perhaps motivated by your lack of success, he could end up one income bracket above or below you, and this is how the cycle goes( with exceptions of course, but consider the number of people with no collegiate relatives, who will likely never see a six-figure salary in their lives ). Thus the underlying caste system of Science reveals itself, a self-fulfilling prophecy based on an incomplete or incorrectly communicates understanding of the branch dealing with the self. I am not sure if genetics as a field has discovered anything about whether genes change over a lifetime, but it is cited in so many control schemes that define people's lives, those things that many sceptics stand against now and will for all time, regardless of how much scientific evidence is produced in the contrary. Something about it is highly incomplete, and it isn't until science reconciles with spirituality that further understanding of the self and the universe can continue. But, they control the information, they control the people, they control the world. The RCC would never let science by at the peak of its power,  and likewise, the Sciences of the world follow the exact same scheme by denying possibilities they do not immediately understand. I would like to see it happen within my lifetime, the not-science enriches possibility and makes the struggles of life worthwhile. It grants hope to those who needs cannot be met by the material. It gives faith to those who believe in beautiful days every day. It gives meaning to the divine. It gives dimension to experience, life to life.

Girl on Girl Action

So I noticed something the other day, when talking to a girl about some drama with one of her friends(er... 'friends'). She said they weren't talking, and she wasn't asking her to hang out, and every time they saw eachother, the other girl would say as little as possible to her and avoid eye contact at all costs, so I got to thinking: what part of this is friendship exactly? I know for a fact that having that person in her life was destroying her, but is it really so hard to let go of something like that? Honestly, none of it was surprising to hear at all because it was just an extension of what their relationship had been all along: a battle for superiority. One gets dirt on the other, gossips it around until the other person notices(belittling your opponent), and once one know that the other knew what she did, it was one off-handed remark that would just set off the first and set them into the 'fighting' stage(so what I just described was their friendly periods). Once the other had nothing left to use as a weapon, she just picked up the friendship and used that. One is still clinging on to the ship while the other is burning it to the ground. Honestly, it's beyond psychotic to observe, yet it happens all the time as if it were a totally acceptable(or even sane) thing to do.
I think it's a product of television dramas, where people subconsciously(aka unknowingly) act out the roles of the characters to some degree in the hope that it will produce the same feelings that the show did, forgetting and leaving out all the bad parts, of course.
Drama is not good to partake in, ever. It honestly all seems like good fun, but you already know how it ends. Drama is taking a group of perfectly happy people and giving them the idea that only some of them can be happy at a time. The result is apparent everywhere drama exists, look for yourself.

Sun Cycles, We're All On The Same Ride

It's a silly notion, that somehow travelling around the sun a certain number of times makes you somehow more advanced than your peers... I imagine this came from older times where survival was difficult and not any part a given: when the environment would put pressures onto your sustainability and survival on a day-to-day basis, then making it from one year to the next would probably take a good deal of work. However, even that in itself implies some type of existence far richer than anything we are exposed to at the bare-minimum of survival nowadays: surviving against elements requires focus, reaction, learning, and a sort of hunter-gatherer dance of life and death. Even subsistence farming requires you to care for and nurture other living creatures, for your survival is based entirely on each one of theirs, but hopefully you could make it worth more than that in the process of the 'daily grind'. However, this archaic notion seems to have propagated into our modern paradigm, where the difficulties of the survival loop have finally been circumvented by population-wide efforts of food distribution and necessities being provided for. The fact that someone may have seemingly survived a number of years doesn't mean anything any longer, because literally any person still alive can do that, and our environment of survival has become a pretty homogeneous civil existence(well, anyone that I have ever met anyway). Honoring 'elders', especially those who are under the age of about ~60, is a waste of reverence in most cases, and I don't mean disrespect when I say that, but chances are, they lived, and are living the same life that you are living, and will live, give or take a few letters or symbols or faces, or a brand or two, maybe a different road or a slightly different location here and there. The setting changes, but the experience remains the same, and yet there they are, years beyond you, and nothing to teach you from avoiding their fate(although some will try to convince you that a few more dollars are waiting for you if you do X or Y). It's fascinating that there are hundreds of millions of other people living the exact same life, with a very similar array of feelings toward the components of this life(job, construct of marriage, closed family-units, etc) and none of them have  committed to trying to change it. I mean, some have, of course, but the fact that not enough have to make a dent on this style of life, in a positive way, leads me to believe a great majority of people lack confidence in their ability to create change, and I believe I have isolated the point of their doubt.
A lot of people I talk to about their original ideas don't seem to believe that 'others', or the part of our minds we reserve for the mass of people we have never met, don't see the world the same way they do. Or somehow, they don't have the same opinions of things, especially if they have developed to some complexity. There seems to be a certain doubt that our minds could possibly have the same opinionated direction, or that given the same net of information, we wouldn't draw similar opinions from it. It's like people assume that somehow, our needs are all selfishly different, and the things we desire and extrapolate from these needs are even more different... It's sad to assume you couldn't relate to someone you don't know, as that's the same as closing the door to every person you've never met before. Somehow, people forget that the same way they have friends, and they have connections that relate to those friends, other people, even strangers, have friends, and they connect to their friends in the same way. There seems to be an air of doubt that we are all in fact human, or perhaps doubt that there are things that ALL humans in fact do: they doubt that there is glue to our race. However, historically speaking, we are collaborative in nature, with the trend of evolving societies occurring for literally all of document-able human history, from tribes to civilizations to the rise of nations, people have come together, unified, and attempted to stand up for what they believe. The issues arise when they experience the different: perhaps a different color of skin, a different language, a different view of the divine, or a different view of society, and another unified factor takes a stand: fear. All cognitive beings on this planet experience fear: fear as a defense mechanism to keep us from acting without knowing, fear as a mechanism of survival, but fear also as a restrictive entity for us to experience or attempt something new: perhaps attempting to communicate with someone from another place, or attempt to speak another language, or just try some new type of anything. We are afraid of somehow being mislead by those things we consider external to us: sources of information, people, instincts, and senses(people can externalize and doubt literally everything that is a part of them). So sad that some would actually doubt their innate senses, given any amount of input or tweaking. They doubt alternate states of mind, they doubt the 'reality' of their own experience, and how sad and draining it must be to sign one-self to this, for societies sake(a society that does not serve, no less).
However, in these times, it is important to remember that we are unified through nature. We are all brought in to this world the same way. We all have a mother and a father. We all have a need to survive. We all had a childhood, and we all felt love at some point, for that was our creation. We all feel pleasure, we all have access to emotions(although some suppress this, it is part of your experience, and it is meant to be felt, for a reason, always). We all have means of learning, from birth, throughout life. We all have the capability to conquer challenges, and we all have the capacity for change, for we ourselves have changed before and can again, or we would not be here. For these reasons, the human spirit remains a connecting force between people, and a sound reason in itself for faith in the progress of the species and the capacity for understanding between all people: we have foundation, and with foundation, connection can be built. We are learning always, for if we weren't, there would be no difference between today and the next day, and the one after. Individuals have the choice to learn or not, and that choice is simply a matter of paying attention, being cognitive, giving respect to the moment you are in. This is universal, to all species, to all creatures. The heart and the mind are our greatest teachers, when treated with respect.
[[Also, personal side note, what I have gathered from many people, is that the way you view strangers as a mass(aka the way you view 'the rest of society') and your perception of how they act, is often actually the way you treat strangers initially, and they simply respond to fit the mold you have provided for them(a self-fulfilling prophesy in a way). While there are some exceptions to this(~5% of people :P) most strangers will respond to this in this way with repeatable accuracy. Obviously, test it for yourself, if you don't believe me, but I believe this is a quality innate to the mind.
Therefore, if you have a problem trusting the rest of the world, if you believe strangers are greedy and lonely and selfish and rude, I would say the problem more than likely lies within, as I know many many people who would not fit this mold, many many people who are innately good, many many people who simply want to get along with everyone and are simply looking for signs to be comfortable around you, and when given such a sign, are more than comfortable to be friends.]]
That's all today, you are your own master, you control your own destiny, and you guide your own journey, every step of the way, Love and Light :)

Be Offended, See How Far It Gets You

Every day, I get a feeling that time would easily leave us behind, and it's just everyone's collective audacity that prevents us from taking the gravity of this implication into account: there could easily have been a human race to rise and fall before our time. There could easily have been separate human races on our sister planets Mars and Venus, definitely not within our lifetimes, but there withstands the possibility nonetheless. Proof of parallel humanities does exist(pyramids/water formations on Mars), and it doesn't take too much to draw the connection that there could have been a race on Mars long ago(when it WAS habitable), that could have taken and upset the environment of the planet over many, many years(as we are doing today on our own), and upset the biosphere to such a degree that the planet could no longer sustain surface life. The degree of self-importance of our race is unparalleled to anything in our scope of awareness, to the point that many people choose to forget that something was here before us. Many even choose to forget that there is STILL something surrounding us, sustaining us, that is MUCH larger than us, and has been around for MUCH longer than us. We have one day a year in our WORK calendar to appreciate the planet Earth, and that is about as much thought as some people give to the gigantic contiguous solid sphere that is beneath our feet every single second of every day of our entire lives. They are the ones who take a lot of life for granted, I feel. If appreciation were anything more than a feeling, they would know they are missing out on a whole dimension of thought and life, but I suppose they aren't ready to grow up yet.
To me, the expansion of perception forcibly mirrors the attachment to nature and the acknowledgement of our true caregivers in this physical domain. Even if you refuse to acknowledge the abstract entities that are Mother Nature, or Earth, you can't ignore the distinct pattern that nature has followed to progress to where it is today, and how this pattern continues still(despite any attempts to claim it or control it). It exists in all beings that we are surrounded by, in all living things, and despite modern commercialism, in us as well, which is why, despite our advances against nature in all possible facets, it still finds a way to coexist with us. Despite our rejection of it, despite attempts to proclaim we are something external to it, something different than it, it still integrates us into its grand scheme. It still tolerates us as a parent would love a child, even a rebellious or deviant one: unconditionally.
Acknowledgement of the planet on a larger scale gives indication of just how much power it moves around on a regular basis: volcanic eruptions that could wipe out half the life on the planet, hurricanes that sweep across continents, earthquakes that completely shift the GROUND as we know it, and the whole thing never ever stops spinning. Unending 'barrage' from solar flares, an ozone layer in constant replenishment, a pleasant lack of storms covering its surface(some form of electrical stability, a rare feature in planets with an atmosphere, in case you hadn't looked around), and there is fresh, clean water moving around everywhere, like the blood of our great planet. We take it in daily, similar to the blood cells of our own body taking in oxygen, we take in the sustenance of our great Mother Earth's being and it allows us to keep living comfortably. Not a bad gig, this.
So it has all that power, and like the young, angsty teenage race of creatures that we are(I mean, we're just a few years ahead of walking on two feet, mind you), we reject it, and some of us even go so far as to hate it. But it still tries, and it still sustains us, despite how much we hurt it, and despite how much we injure and oppress our younger sibling races and species(ever seen a factory farm?), it still believes we can learn, testament to the fact that we are still here. No viruses or bacteria have come to wipe us out(though many have come close). I'd be lying if I said there weren't tests, those we can be sure of, but none that we didn't have a chance at passing. Some of these diseases, we were able to get past by some sort of genetic disposition, which until just recently, we had no knowledge of, so that was some sort of something we facilitated somehow without our immediate knowledge... or it let us live. Either way, we've been causing trouble for a while now, and it hasn't been until just recently that it seems we are going to come to a conclusive point.
Many calendars are ending. Many 'doomsdays' are approaching, or have passed just recently. Does it mean the world is ending? Maybe for us, anyway, but probably not. In the weighing of all that is good and all that is bad, many ideologies believe this is the end of our time, but more positive ideologies and spiritual practices believe we are reaching a pivotal point of evolution once again. Perhaps we are supposed to step into our next successive species now or we will be left behind by our environment, as Darwin predicts. Some more esoteric practices believe we need to raise our vibration out of the physical, because the physical body of the Earth is something it does not wish to maintain any longer, and has only done so for this long to allow us to grow to this point and make the leap with it into a higher energy form, perhaps as we are it's Prodigal Son in a sense. Perhaps its something totally different, but all arrows point to one thing: SOMETHING is going to happen. Something very soon. Looking around the world gives a weird sense of discordance and disharmony in a lot of ways, but we are also becoming interconnected as a species in a way we never have before. Perhaps its up to us to decide what happens next.

The Pattern, Do you see it? Do you need to?

We are all one. This phrase means so much, and so little at the same time. The unity across humanity is astounding, especially in the modern times, when most difference can be ironed out by social pressures and the excessive perceived energy required to individualize yourself in any way. After you grow tired of trying  to be the best(like nobody EVER was), you begin to wonder, 'what can I do to just make things better?' When you start engaging yourself in the expansion of perception, you really have to make a few leaps, involved in the liberation of fear and guilt. If we are truly all one, there is no fear involved in the risks in life, because even if it goes so badly, if it something you truly wanted to do, for yourself, then the outcome should not define the experience, and you should proceed without fear, because regardless of what happens, the etheric part of your self brought you there to a challenge that you have always wanted to conquer, and if you fail, you still tried, and if you succeed, then you tried without fear, because you know your limits innately, and you know what you can do if you truly listen to yourself, life is just a matter of proving to yourself every step along the way. Increasing your energy can also be through increasing the energy of others, since we are all one, any change you invoke in others multidimensionally should come back to you in some way or another in your life or lifestyle(we call this karma). Since this other person is a part of you, past incarnation or future prospect, being the bigger person and doing something nice out of your own goodness should change their worldview, and consequently can release tension within yourself. This is the root of the selfless nature involved in transcendence.
I see many people who are 'waking up' in different aspects of their lives, and beginning to draw their own connections between things, which is wonderful, but many of these people still are forgetting fundamental property of awakening: they did not do it on their own, and anyone who helped them get there did not shove their own progress in their face as some sort of superior trait. We are all on the journey, and despite what you may believe, the part of you that feeds your soul desires this awakening moreso than anything, because it is incredibly serving to always be able to see the truth in the scenarios you are involved in: the more you learn, the more control over the actual course of your life you gain. All of your 'unseen' deeds compound externally as 'luck' sometimes, and other times, as a faith that others find in you. Liberating the fearful mind of its problems is a method of raising vibration and expansion of all people, and once you become sensitive, and once you become aware, you will begin to see the pattern to it all, and WE ARE ONE takes on a very personal meaning. After you observe the propagation of positivity through faith for a certain time, you learn the consequences(or results, if you will) of it in your life through impartial self-observation. Soon, the extra energy you used to impart into your daily as some sort of faithful propagation of self-oriented positive karma becomes a more complete selfless channeling of goodness and wholeness, for when you see yourself in the eyes of others, you can truly see how we are all one.
If this still has not rung a bell in at least a few memories across your lifetime, think of this: what if there were an infinite number of people on the planet, but only a very finite number of souls channeling through these people, and the relations of these souls is homogeneous across every implementation of these souls throughout the planet(so like, say 100 people, only 10 souls, each one is simultaneously inhabiting and living 10 separate lives). Although you may never meet another body that you inhabit, or perhaps may only see them in passing, the way you interact with the other souls holds true for all the iterations of your self in all the social circles that the two souls would interact within. So say you are a child in one lifetime and you become jealous of your friend because he has cooler sunglasses or something, and you end up insulting him(from his perspective for no reason at all) and hurting his feelings. Now say at the same time, in the next(simultaneous) lifetime, your soul inhabits the body of the leader of America, and his soul inhabits the body of the leader of China. Suddenly, some sort of regular diplomatic procedure may not feel right from him, or before he even meets you, he just has a bad feeling about you, and for some reason you feel like you have to work a lot harder just to gain his trust, all agendas aside. Have you ever met someone and just felt some degree of distrust to them, without them even doing anything? Does it ever turn out that it was just all in your head, and they are actually a really great person, and your lack of trust was just some misunderstanding? If you truly trust the people of the world(as we aim to do), then this mistrust is not the soul maintaining prejudice(as the mind does), but rather remembering a defensive instinct toward a certain energy. Once we know we can trust one another again, removing these defenses allows the energy of life to flow between ourselves once again.
Rather than in that example, with 10 separate souls interacting with each other in every possible social scenario possible, the truth remains that we are ONE, so seeing part of yourself in every person you walk past is no coincidence: we all have the same needs, biologically and psychologically speaking, and we all feel the same emotions throughout our lives. To know ones'self is to know the world, and to realize that which would ALWAYS make your day better, is to know how to be the light in the lives of every person you meet.
The best way to help those that you love is to help even those you may not feel close enough to love, because it may be that someone else is helping the one you love in that moment as well. After all, everything is connected, a fractal within a fractal. Be the light in someone's day, and when things seem dark, never lose faith. :) Namaste.