Real Freedom

When asked about freedom most will say that it is living in a tropical paradise, owning fancy cars and many homes, not having to work for anybody, or any number of great ideas sold as finally making it. What is true about all these things, is that none of them will actually make you free. Achieving any of these will not grant you the freedom living in true happiness each and every day. These are all material, external from the self. External freedoms, although wonderful sounding, are the fool's trap for keeping you locked into the societal grid and measuring up to those around you. Real freedom, is internal.

When I say internal freedom, I mean actually finding a complete acceptance of yourself as a human being out to experience life.  This has nothing to do with anything material. This has nothing to do with placing faith in something, destiny aligning, being lucky, or using your clever mind to do business. This has everything to do with you accepting responsibility for who you are. Until you accept responsibility, you will have nothing but things. In accepting responsibility you will find that you are truly powerful in every action you take. A responsible person has their actions match their words and their intentions supporting the great oneness that is humanity.

I am not saying that you should not go about making money, experiencing the world, or having a job. What I am saying is that you should go forward accepting complete responsibility for who you are and how important you are to the whole of the universe. Each action you take is a part of the great existence, do not let it be wasted on vanity and perception. As the Dalai Lama said, "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."

Modern Mystics

The spiritual visionaries and religious messengers written and talked about are those that have risen above the masses in their conscious state, transcended, become enlightened, or connected with a higher plane of some kind. These great gurus sit atop the mountains of spirituality and reside in a world separate from the illusion we live in day to day. We look to them for guidance in books, lectures, videos, and retreats. But all to often the inspiration, motivation, or wisdom received has little impact and fades when we come back to our everyday life. So what to do? If these lectures and wisdoms are falling short, then how is it that we, the people, are going to rise out of the reality we believe to be a part of? We must stop pretending that the answers we need are written down to be memorized, repeated, and put into a routine. The answer is in you being you. The same answer is in those around simply being themselves.

Religion and spirituality is nothing new for the human experiencers. It has been there for the masses as a reason to live, as an unexplained faith. Consider that the reason we call it blind faith is because we don't understand why the faith is there. The great scriptures are read to us from the speaker on the mountain top. Here we sit at the bottom, the message falling on deaf ears. If the message was getting through, we would not be caught in the illusion. We would not be angry with everyone and fearful of everything. Yet here we are, working every day, cursing our bosses while we sit at home, hoping we do not lose our job.

Golden Ears Provincial Park

The same can be seen with highs and lows of life. One day we are feeling successful and another we are feeling life is over, nothing can be worse. The journey of life is climbing the mountain. There is nowhere to be, nothing to achieve. There is no top to climb to and shout your wisdoms from. There is no way to get to where you want to go so you might as well stop thinking you're going to make it. Whether you are an artist, an investor, a custodian, or any way you wish to describe yourself, you are love first and foremost. You are pure love. You are the modern mystic, the one who knows the truth.

If you would like to prove this truth, you can see for yourself. You are on the Earth, living as a human being and learning each day. If you will just share what you are experiencing, good and bad, with those around you, and listen to what they share, you will already be living amongst the Jesus' and Muhammads.You need only to make it this way.

Restoring the Wilderness

Wilderness. The wilderness is a location in its natural state, free from anything other than raw existence. In the wilderness, there is nothing false, nothing to blame, no victims, and no circumstances. Here, everything simply is, and wherever you will look, there you are, looking. To visit the wilderness in our reality is to step away from the society and wander to a space free of human influence. Solely natural processes run these spaces. The trees grow, the animals live, the sun shines, and the rain falls. Without the pressures of clever human minds, there is no time, no agenda, and no expectations. This wilderness has become a precious space that many organizations fight to hold onto and to protect. But there is much debate over what can even be called wilderness. The clever minds of course must find a definitive answer, a logical explanation. A space of wilderness that is to be protected will always feel the effects of human presence. If a space is kept protected yet is impacted by pollution hundreds of miles away, it cannot be free of human influence. This space is disappearing in our natural world.

The wilderness however, is not just a place to be visited for vacation or to watch on the computer. There is another wilderness, which has also been overrun with human influence and pushed to extinction. This wilderness is the space within. The wilderness within is with you at birth but is soon trampled over, filled with hopes, dreams, limits, expectations, fears, anxieties, pressures, rights, wrongs and so on. This sacred space is lost as children grow learning about what they should fear, how they should live, who they should look up to, and what they should aim to achieve. The parents teach the children how to act, how to become successful, and how to fit in. When the child is grown they have no connection to the wilderness that once existed. They are now a part of the society, anxious, fearful, angry, void of any love and always busy going here and there. They are now civilized, successful, educated, important, and completely unhappy. They are unhappy because they are lost. There is no real connection, no true love, and no recognition of the self. The only way to solve this is to return home, to restore the wilderness.

Each human being begins as a source of pure love and still has a home where they can find their true self. All one has to do is stop. Stop running about, stop analyzing the world, stop planning your great escape and stop trying to figure it all out. Stop and just be with yourself. You have learned so well from your society how to be with others and you cannot even be a moment with yourself. As the practice of looking within deepens, the human influence melts away. Society no longer grips the mind and the mind no longer grips the spirit. When you break free of these shackles taught by society, wilderness is restored and here you will find that you are just where you always needed to be, wherever that is for you.

The Human Existence

There are too many conversations going on and on about nothing. Nothing is shared, nothing is experienced, no one is listening. Our language has become so complicated that simply sharing from the heart and connecting is arduous. The workplace, the coffee shops, the social media communities - everyone is talking in such descriptions and filters that original thoughts have been suffocated. In our greatest attempts at relating to one another, great riddles are formed. Sharing about a problem with a neighbour's pet becomes a discussion about judgement and categorization more than an honest sharing of fact and feeling. We describe the situation through our own story we have created. "Our neighbour must be plotting against us. He must be sitting and stewing about how to aggravate his pet to cause a scene." We talk about people by the categories they fit. "My neighbour is a leftist, anorexic, free-loading, savage." But what we do not do is open ourselves to simply connecting with people. There is always a story to be created, a judgement to be cast, a box to fit everything in to, a way to create 'us' versus 'them'.

This is the state of mankind. So deeply lost, trying to carve out a path and belong to an 'us' so they can curse a 'them'. The human experience has been traded for a meagre existence.

Meditation: Where Do I Start?

About 4 years ago I decided that I was going to develop a meditation practice with the intention of bringing myself a little more stillness, mindfulness and awareness. At the time I didn't really know that this was what I wanted but I did know that I often had a hard time sitting still, enjoying the quiet, and not being stressed about school and work in my free time. For a couple of months I struggled with what meditation even meant to me. I worried constantly about how I should be positioned, what I should or should not think about, and how I could possibly measure any noticeable change. I generally tried to sit in a cross-legged position slightly elevated on a cushion, simply for comfort and would just sit in the most silent room I could find for anywhere from 5-20 minutes a day.

For the first month I would use my "meditations" to just try and listen to my breath and make my eyes still. It often took over ten minutes before I could settle my mind and my body just to stop twitching and moving. By the second month I was able to keep my eyes still within a few minutes and be focused on just breathing. It was about the third month where I really noticed actual benefits in my day-to-day life. At this point when I would sit down, I was immediately still and would move in and out of listening to my breath or just rest in a state of being aware. I found that throughout the day I didn't fidget so much, I didn't worry so much, and I found true contentment and joy in just being present to what was happening at any given moment.

Angkor Wat

I had not read any books up to this point or much about meditation but I wanted to take some steps towards building a better practice and here is where, for me, I went about it all wrong. I started reading books about how to meditate, when to meditate, different techniques, chakra meditation, mindfulness meditation, you name it. I started to become very focused on techniques or practices I thought were cool rather than the whole reason I had originally brought a meditation practice into my life. As I would try different techniques I would get frustrated because I was so worried about following steps and methods that I would end up sitting for 30 minutes a day thinking to myself and could not even find time to just STOP to just BE.

After a few months I stopped practicing regularly and then it became a chore to where I eventually stopped practicing all together. I had made something so simple into a complex task which I analyzed and obsessed over . Ultimately, I lost any will to pursue what I chose to label as too hard through my research. Last year I decided I needed to get back into a practice. I started reading a couple of books and was quickly frustrated with techniques and methods again so I just closed the books and promised myself that each day I would find 5 minutes to be still in some position, some location, and just sit. The most beautiful thing began to unfold. Within days I was back to where my practice had been when I thought there was "good progression." But you guessed it, I lasted a couple of months before I fell off the band wagon and told myself I didn't have time to be spent each day meditating. Telling myself I did not have time was a recurring theme in my life (that will have to be saved for another day).

Since this summer I have started to rebuild my meditation practice from the ground up. I have been working ever so slowly to keep it organic and move on small step at a time. I have given up on a progression or any sort of expectation and started to simply enjoy the process. I have found that the simplicity of just finding time to sit still every day has lead to developing my own techniques that are natural for me and my practice is so much more than listening to my breath for 5 minutes a day. Now I find myself looking forward to my practice each day, at some point, in some location, and just finding stillness or mindfulness wherever it happens to be. I start my morning with taking care of the basic needs of our puppies, then I move into my meditation and start my day on the right track. This right track, is a practice of just being present, of just being love. Sometimes there is simply nothing going on when I sit, sometimes there are visualized locations or emotions, sometimes there is just a scan of the body to reconnect with how I'm feeling, and sometimes, there is just a state of a pure emotion that emerges. Perhaps another post I will go through my current technique, but for now, it is just a personal journey that I highly encourage everyone to start for themselves.

I am by no means an expert on meditation, but I do now believe there is a reason there are an abundance of books on how to meditate in circulation. It is because meditation is entirely personalized so each person could write their own book on what they do, how they are progressing, and what feels natural to them. There is no ladder to climb, there is no one to compare to, there is no proper way to position yourself, and there is no proper technique to follow. All you need to do is have an intention in your mind and then build a consistent practice. Take 5 minutes each day to sit still and go from there. Find your own practice, you do not need to learn somebody else's.

World Vegan Day

To believe man has come from apes and apes only eat plants, when did we become smart enough to eat other animals? Or more importantly, why have we not realized as a collective, that we have no reason to consume the parts of another sentient being?

From a basic biological perspective, we have a digestive tract set up to consume plants and not flesh. Animals that consume flesh have short intestines whereas humans have comparatively long intestines. When the human body must process meats, this meat has to travel such a distance and remain in the body for far longer than it naturally would in a carnivorous animal. This excessive time spent in the body weighs one down, causes the body to become more acidic, and leaves excess iron and sulfur in the digestive tract which is far from pleasant to smell. When speaking of carnivorous animals, they have very acidic stomachs which break down the meats quickly. In humans, the digestive system must excrete extra acids and the organs must work overtime to break down the unnatural substances introduced.

From an energetic perspective, imagine what is in the foods being eaten, beyond the physical impurities. We are warned not to consume too much fish for example, especially larger fish such as tuna. This is because there are high concentrations of mercury that accumulate as you move up the food chain. Small fish contain small amounts of mercury and as the larger fish consume them, that mercury accumulates upwards and so on. Consider the accumulation of toxins and impurities that would be present in animals that are killed at the hands of man. Let me first say that the idea of “humane killing” does not exist. There is no humane way to end a life that did not want to be ended. When this happens, there is much resistance in the being that is about to have its life taken. Living beings all have survival as their top priority and any attempt to cut their lives short would be against their will. You would want someone trying to murder you and end your life early, it would bring you great grief, fear,  and anxiety; it would be tragic. Then for other animals, this is also the case. They are held against their will, confined to small spaces, and separated from their social bonds. They experience the emotions anyone else would of anxiety, fear, deep sadness, pain etc. and then they are killed and packaged up with all these poisons ever present in their tissues. You consume this, you, at the top of the food chain. And you, will carry an ever building level of pain, grief, sadness, and outrage. This emotion is expressed as anger, frustration, and blame.

The impact of animal product consumption is deep and affects us at a cellular level. This has been understood for a long time now as it is observed in spiritual customs that meat is not to be consumed. This choice is part of more than just the physical world around us. This choice is a stepping stone towards closeness with a higher power, closeness with the spirit. Consuming flesh is unnatural, it is disruptive to the body and takes away important energy to spend it on digestion and cleansing. Each organ must work extra to process and then clean up after the mess. To connect deepest with the spirit is to be clear in all senses of the word. Clear of obstructions, clear of waste, and abundant with energy and an open heart.

The tissues of animals were not intended to be fuel for the human body. The human body is supposed to be an intelligent design, above all other beings on the planet. Therefore, consuming other beings serves as a disruptor to the body, not an enhancer. To be human is to be of the highest level of consciousness. To eat meat, as building blocks of your body, is to bring yourself down to the plane of consciousness that is animals. This state is for the animals and does not serve you as you experience what it is to thrive as a human being. When you bring yourself down from the human plane of consciousness, you will be removed from the spiritual experience, removed from bliss and joy. As a human being, you have the great gift of experiencing the true nature of the world, the nature of the universe, the true nature of God. You are a great protector of the world we live in, not a destroyer. You deserve to experience the full extent of the human experience. Seek love and compassion. Be free and let those around you be free as they are too.