O.G.

We

Our bodies all are unique but also have deep historical commonality and depth with everything, depth that is so deep that it is hard to grasp with the human mind. Have you ever wondered how your body came to be? Do you think matter just magically appeared in your mother's womb? What about your mother's body? What about the Earth's body? What about our planetary system or our galaxy for that matter?

Before our galaxy even came to be, it was first a huge cloud of particle dust in space. Slowly but surely the particles started to pull and tug on each other, due to their tiny electric charges, and swirled and swirled until they formed and created super hot and energized spheres, which we call stars or suns.

But as the stars were being formed, so were the planets, not only the planets but also the chemical compounds that make up dirt, air, water, fire, plants, animals and rocks on the planet. We, as human beings, are animals and too derive from that cloud of dust, and when we die, the particles break down and our bodies, once again, turn into dust. Every living body is recycled dust, and when the being dies, the body will be recycled once again.

We, and by we I mean everything, not only belong to a cloud of dust, but to the beginning of time, the big bang— when every "thing,"atoms and particles, was compressed into one.

We might all seem different to each other, but we are in fact all the same; we are all recycled dust. I always wonder why humans don't feel the connectedness anymore. It is as if the chemistry is breaking down between individuals. It is okay though because in science when chemicals break down, the ability to bond a new and simpler form of chemistry is possible.

Breath: The Governor's Governor

In the past I would eat rapidly, one quick bite after the other, gobbling down food like a madman. There would be no pause between bites, only the constant chewing until the whole meal was finished, and after the food was all gone, I would want more. A small meal wouldn't satisfy me. Even worse than my eating habits, however, I would, and I still kind of do, drink even faster than I ate. Whenever I was inside a restaurant with free refills, I would put those soda machines to work! By the time my girlfriend would take her first sip, for example, I would have gone through two or sometimes three glasses of drink. I would not pause or rest between my next bite or sip. Now that I look back I understand that those eating and drinking habits were an expression of my anxiety. But what was creating the anxiety? The slowing down and space between isn't just important with eating and drinking, but also in thinking, and especially breathing.

Just as I constantly and rapidly stimulated my taste-buds, I did the same with my breath.  I unconsciously breathed rapidly to stimulate and feed my thoughts. Most of my life I was a very weary, shy, and anxious person, and my short shallow breaths fueled the fire of those fears. The fears of course were created by the mind, which creates thoughts. The mind can sometimes interfere with people's lives by putting false, insignificant, and absurd judgements into their heads. Since my breaths were short and shallow, my mind would constantly create very fearful thoughts throughout my day. "What if this person doesn't like me?" "What if they don't say hello?" "What will they say about me?" These were thoughts that would rule my everyday living. I would constantly feed my thoughts without slowing them down or pausing in between them.

The breath is very powerful and influential. It is what helps the ignition, combustion, and creation of energy (thoughts) inside the "pistons" of the brain. When we breath quickly, our thoughts become very rapid and often very obscured. When we think very quickly, thought after thought, it is as if our brain is trying to drive on the freeway on first gear; our brain activity quickly starts "redlining." But when we slow and deepen the breath, we discover lower and heavier gears that can handle the demand of the "freeway," whatever it may be. I have to jump on a freeway tomorrow morning; it is called the History 6 midterm essay exam. This exam is a very demanding freeway. Now instead of freeway I will call it "situation." The situation tomorrow demands that I arrive at my destination, the end of the exam, effectively and on time. Once I find myself in the situation tomorrow and my breath is rapid, reaching the destination on time will be a very difficult task, but if I am aware of my breath and make sure to slow it down, I will be able to shift into a deeper gear, easily remember details, cruise through, and reach my goal.

Currently I am not, not yet at least, in control of most of my thoughts, but I know that with attentiveness and awareness of my breathing I can overcome my fears. In order to calm the mind, we must first slow the breath. The breath is what ultimately fuels the brain, which can create a lot of fearful and false thought. The breath is more powerful than the mind. Therefore, if we have control of the fuel we will have control of the unconscious-loving government that the brain tries to impose on us. So we must pay attention to the speed of and space between our eating, drinking, and other activities but most important of all is the breath. The breath can guide or misguide us in any situation that we find ourselves in depending if we are aware and in control of it. So lets become aware of it and help others as well. Doing so will help humanity overcome the situation that it is faced with in these days.

Drama for Your Mama

History should not be taken so seriously. It can be history that happened a thousand years ago or two minutes ago, it shouldn't matter. The past is only a thought. It's a remembrance of the events that occurred, and unfortunately most of the time our memories are so biased, judged, and labeled by our mind that the reality behind the past event or events is obscured and false. Nations and civilizations have been fighting for millennia because of their holding on to the past. But how do we know if the events in the past, which the history books tell us, is what really happened?

The past is like a dream. Many of us hardly remember all of the exact events and occurrences that occur in a dream, and when we wake up, we sometimes create our own storyline and version of the dream. Sometimes, in order to make the dream more exciting and dramatic, we might add a little more drama to it. Not only does drama dramatize events in our dreams but also events of our past.

History between nations can be and I am sure is dramatized so much that all of the exact and factual events are non-existent. Perhaps nations and empires have been fighting each other because they hold on to the unconsciously created drama that was never real in the first place.

This attachment to drama doesn't only occur to nations, however, it occurs to individuals as well. Many of us unconsciously hold on to this self-generated drama of the past and as with many soap operas, create events are exaggerated in order to keep the storyline interesting. A woman or man, for example, who got made fun of as a child might hold on to that drama into adulthood. The child might judge a simple moment of embarrassment into a dramatic and traumatic experience. Many of us do that with our past; we hold on to the dramatic past. It's insanity.

We should learn lessons from nature and observe how it lives life. An animal, that is an animal that hasn't been around and influenced by evil emanating humans, doesn't care about the past, nor the future for that matter. You can hit a dog for doing something bad, but give the dog a few minutes, and it will forget all about that incident. Nations, civilizations, and people should learn from nature.

Lost in Thought

Just Be

"Everybody's talkin' at me
I don't hear a word they're sayin'
Only the echoes of my mind"

- "Everybody's Talking" by Bill Withers

Have you ever noticed how much unnecessary thinking we do? When we are driving around, in class, at work, or at home, we constantly think. Now, imagine the brain being a computer, although technically it is the ultimate super computer, what would happen if a computer was fed data nonstop, hour after hour and year after year? Eventually the computer will begin to overheat and slow down because of the input of excessive data, which causes an immense amount of stress on the computer. That is what happens to the brain when we, as spiritual teacher and author of The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle puts it, incessantly think. Vital energy is drained with constant thinking, especially if it's negative. Unfortunately, most of the time we think negative thoughts without ever really realizing it. We criticize and judge ourselves through the day, and the only peace we ever get is when we sleep. If we pay attention to the voice in the head, the thinker, that unconsciously drives us, we will notice that it never lets us be.

Constant thought causes stress. To make the voice go away we, unconsciously of course, excessively watch TV, go on Facebook, play sports, work out, eat, work, consume drugs and alcohol or what I just realized about myself, study. However, distracting ourselves from the internal voice by keeping ourselves busy does not fix anything since those habitual distractions are only momentarily successful. For example, have you ever indulged in chocolate, ice cream, or any other delicious treat to forget about a problem? Sure, treating yourself with food temporarily helps you forget about the problem, but it doesn't help you fix the problem. After the snack, the voice, which was moved temporarily to the back of the mind, makes its way back to the front and brings back the stress.

As I mentioned earlier, avoiding the voice, the constant talker, does not fix anything. The best thing to do is to be aware of the voice and know that it is not you. Tolle says that the voice in the head is the ego, the instrument that has taken over. The ego tries to keep itself alive through thought. We are not the ego. We are consciousness. What if the ego is the mind that has, over time, gotten too smart and has created a false reality in order to fool us into believing it to be the real one? For example, like in the movie The Matrix, the super computer is, in this case, the brain or ego that creates a system or false reality for us that keeps us busy, entertained, so we can be diverted from the truth.

Also like The Matrix, on occasion some special individuals, like Neo and Morpheus, are born into the system who find the truth and help reveal it. I believe that people such as Jesus and the Buddha are individuals who have escaped the false reality of the ego, have seen "the sun," as Neo and Trinity do at the end of the trilogy, and have brought forth knowledge of the lost, true reality into the false. The ego is afraid of its death because its only source of fuel and energy is our thoughts. That is why it doesn't want us to find out about the truth because it knows that once we do, it will be no more.

Even though I still need a lot of work on developing my awareness of thinking, I am glad that I am conscious of it now. Many people throughout history have lived their whole lives without ever being aware of consciousness, living only through the eyes of the ego. The one that judges, criticizes, blames, and complains about everything in life. Imagine approaching somebody or something without the judgements that are hardwired into the mind; the meeting would be genuine. You would meet people of different walks of life peacefully and attentively. Since your inner voice would be no more, your complete and full attention would be focused on that somebody or something. How beautiful that must feel.

Misty Morning Duck

I took this on the Santa Ana river trail in Riverside early one morning.

This one is my favorite out of the three.

Choice Awareness

Chess is a game played on a board with sixty four squares containing eight pawns, two bishops, two knights, two rooks, one queen, and one king on each side. Although this game is played on a small board, the number of moves or choices a player has throughout the game sometimes seems infinite. When it comes to making a move, being able to see and make the best choice is what usually leads to winning the game. That is why a skilled chess player always makes sure that every single move is the best move, one that raises the chance of success. I find that life is a lot like chess.

Like chess, our environment is our chessboard in which we make thousands, if not millions, of choices every single day of our lives. In chess, the first moves are called the opening moves; they determine what kind of style or technique a player is going to use for the match and usually set up a player for success or failure. In the same manner, we could set up our day with good opening moves. The first choices that we make create a ripple, a wave that we could ride throughout the day, if we know how to catch it—the trick is to stick to the wave. For example, when our alarm clock goes off in the morning, we can either choose to wake up right away or hit the snooze button about twenty times. If we hit the snooze button a couple times, we already missed a critical wave. Our will to get up is not strong enough and the laziness takes over, but if we wake up early and on time, we feel good and are able to accomplish more without the stress of being rushed due to time constriction. We then could use that vibrant morning energy and use it to our advantage by keeping it alive for as long as we can. It is important to start the day off with good choices since they set up what kind of style or technique we will use to face the day.

On occasion, some days end with a feeling of success or accomplishment while others end with stress, a sense of failure, or something of that nature, and sometimes the result of success or failure is due to one little decision. In chess a player can make a move that, at the moment, seems small and insignificant, but at the end of the game can find out that that little, seemingly insignificant decision predicted the outcome of the game. Similarly, one small mistake can ruin our whole day, but one small successful decision can create a world of endless possibilities. For example, if I choose to smile at a stranger—a seemingly small choice—instead of mechanically looking away like most people do in our day and age, I create the potential of making a new friend and more. If I smile the effect of the smile continues on until its effects ceases, but if I look away, the possibility of making a new friend instantly disintegrates. That little, tiny, insignificant choice has the potential of creating a new bond and may even lead to other great things such as meeting another great person. Therefore we must be careful with the choices we make no matter how small and feeble they seem.

Although it is a matter of awareness and training, I believe that, like the skilled chess player, we can train ourselves to see and choose the best choice at each moment in our lives. Still, I have to remind myself constantly to be conscious about my choice making in most situations. Once we realize that we have a choice to react or act in a consciously productive way, the miracles that we encounter in our lives will begin to grow and occur more often. We are writing our history and future every single moment of our lives, why not make it better?