Month: May 2019

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 19: Setting Daily Goals to Create Habits.

I thought I’d just take a moment to reflect today on all the goals I’m currently working on achieving, and since I’ve yet to write today’s thousand words anyway, I thought writing about my goals would be a great way to reflect on them a for good while. I’m not talking about extremely ambitious, long-term goals here. I’m talking about the small goals which I make a point of keeping daily track of in my notes notebook. One of the goals which has helped me the most so far, which has given me great peace of mind in the past few months is my goal of not drinking. I can’t drink a single drop of alcohol – no liquor, beer, wine, whatever it is. Growing up, drinking was some of the greatest fun my friends and I could have. It was what allowed us to get into the crazy fun situations we always got into. Over the years though, as I started maturing, I realized I couldn’t enjoy drinking anymore, at least not the full experience of it, including the side effects. My hangovers were straight from hell, filled with a general anxiety and fear about life, with a sort of hatred and intense hostility against life, cussing at the heat, brushing off the sweat from my face, everything hurting, not wanting to talk to anyone. I don’t know remember a lot of my drunk times from way back in the day, so I don’t know if things were always so tragic, or if I was just becoming more aware of the horrible state drinking puts a person in. Either way, I soon realized I had to stop. Drinking was draining me of energy, it was making me lose and break things and money was always scarce. I was doing much harm to myself during my drinking days, and not only to myself but to my family for a long time, and now it was happening with my wife. I couldn’t keep it up. I started with a simple 5 day goal, and I kept adding 5 days every time, with some drinking in between goals. With each goal that passed I felt less and less desire to drink, yet when the goal finished I’d always be tempted to start again. I did a hundred days and drank again, only to feel sick of it a few days later. I was also able to drink in a more controlled manner. I was excited for the next goal though, and after a powerful acid experience I decided I had to double the days. I’m currently about sixty days into my two hundred days of no drinking, and I can honestly say I don’t think I’ll even feel the need to drink again once this goal is over. My attitude towards alcohol and its role in my life has completely changed. The next goal I’ve worked on over  the past few years is to stop watching porn and masturbating. This is obviously something more or less normal for all boys growing up, yet we don’t realize we are draining ourselves of essential physical and mental energy whenever we ejaculate. We also don’t understand that we are becoming addicted, slaves to pleasure and lust. As I progress in my spiritual and intellectual journey, it has become clear that both of these habits have to go. It feels good that after many months of working on this, I can now say I am free from both of these things. I have a beautiful wife now anyway, and I don’t need to fantasize about anything else or look for girls on social media. Temptation is always there, as well as in real life, but it is easier to succumb to something seemingly harmless like porn, whereas I took a decision before I married, that I would remain loyal to my wife no matter what, so I’m not too worried about temptation in real life. Now that I don’t drink I have self-control at all times and can make sure I don’t do anything stupid in the heat of the moment. Perfect, both goals go hand in hand. Another goal I’m working on is to exercise every day. I’ve been at it for the past few weeks now, non-stop, and it feels great to have so much extra energy. I take a moment every day to either run ten laps around the baseball field, do some yoga, or some push-ups, or lift some weights. Exercise is essential to keeping our bodies strong and effective, just like one’s diet. Regarding diet, my only goals for now are to make sure to eat breakfast every day, and to never eat any later than midnight. I’ve been pretty consistent with this goal so far. As I’ve mentioned in some earlier posts, I have a goal of reading a book a week. Sometimes I take two or three weeks depending on the size of the book. Apart from this, I have a goal of reading at least one chapter of the Bible daily. Although I can’t really say that I’m either a Christian or a Jew, I was raised with the Bible, and I highly doubt that this book is one to be easily discarded and set aside. Due to my interest in religion, in spirituality, in literature, in philosophy and in psychology and society, the Bible is a must read for me. Since it’s very long I read just a chapter or two every day with Maria, we are currently about halfway. After the Bible I plan to read the Quran, or the Zohar, as the next books to be read on a daily basis. I want to understand the essential ideas of these texts, and to know as much as possible about their connections, and about the mental and spiritual states of those who wrote them. Although it’s not yet an official goal, I usually read a Buddhist Sutra on most days, since they usually really short, but have great meaning to them. I’ve been learning about Buddhism for quite a while now, so I think I just might start an actual goal of reading at least one Sutra every day. The messages I am reminded of as I read them usually put me in a great state for my daily meditation. My goal is to meditate at least twenty minutes straight every day, and I’ve kept this up for maybe a year now, yet I still keep track every day. I don’t meditate to fulfill the goal though, but to just meditate, to simply be. I find that this is the best approach to meditation, but I’m no expert. I encourage you all to try this daily meditation, just sitting for twenty minutes. If anything, it will create a peaceful moment for you to appreciate your life, and to appreciate being with yourself, away from all the craziness of life.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 20.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 18: Hatred and Hip-Hop, Lessons Learned from Party Days.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been more or less aware of the unnatural state of the life we live, of the wicked way the world works, of the way the whole system runs. I was afflicted by the hatred and violence I would see on the news that my dad would watch every day, by the corruption and poverty, the incessant and unnecessary pain and suffering of so many, by the hypocrisy of the world. I would hear horrible stories of gruesome deaths taking place in my home country, gang members dismembering business owners for not being able to pay a monthly sum. I couldn’t imagine people living in such conditions of fear in the country I had been born in. Except it wasn’t only in Central America that this was going on. I often watched videos of another powerful, international gang, the police, attack people on video as well, tackling and killing unarmed civilians, and I was absorbing all this hatred and internalizing it subconsciously. I would show these videos to my mother, who always advised me not to let hatred affect me, that nothing good comes from witnessing injustice. I just kept making offensive remarks about the police officers, about how they should be severely punished, and that there should be no police at all, since all the officers are just as corrupt as any of us regular people without a badge. I was filled with a stupid, self-righteous hatred at all the injustice, I was becoming an extremist, not acknowledging that there are good and bad people in every profession. I knew that hip-hop was the perfect venue to express my hatred, hip-hop having been long associated with protesting and fighting the system, and also the police and the government, for a cause. Meanwhile as my hatred grew, I also absorbed lyrics which casually discussed guns and drugs on a daily basis, thinking I could just vibe along to the rhythm and the rhymes scheme, not internalizing what was being said. I was naïve and didn’t know at that age that our soul is always listening, paying attention behind the scenes. I hadn’t yet learned about the unconscious mind and how it registers everything and applies it in our daily life. Not surprisingly to my current self, I normalized these behaviors and overall lifestyle in my mind, and I started doing the same things that I listened to, since they naturally arose anyway when I entered high school. I’m not saying that I did anything I did directly influenced by music, but once certain ideas about life are normalized in a young person’s mind, it’s more likely that they will succumb to such behavior, especially when it presents itself as a great temptation. My group of friends consisted of a gang of crazy kids who were involved in fights, drugs and problems with police. Many came from broken homes and have parents who are in and out of jail, or came from families with serious financial problems, or substance abuse problems. I was raised in a different way than them, at least at home. My parents always taught me morals, which endure to this day, and those morals have kept me from going over the limit many times if I’m honest with myself and with you all. Maybe my friends’ decisions to live these kinds of lives were not influenced so much by music or the media, but by the people in their own lives who they saw as role models, as well as their peers, and who resembled those characters in their favorite songs. In my case, my parents could never have imagined that I would do some of the things I did, especially at such a young age, so they trusted I wasn’t doing anything wrong. They had done everything they could to prevent my brothers and I from being in the company of anyone they believed was living life wrong, who would influence us down the wrong path. Kids in Honduras don’t start getting fucked up with their friends at 13 or 14, leaving home, getting in street fights and getting arrested, unless they are already entering into the gang life, one which they will never escape from. My parents were used to a very conservative culture where children grow with their parents and family is always close together. This prevents any unprecedented danger since the family moves as a pack, and values are mutually agreed upon and enforced. My eyes were open to a whole new life, to what I thought was unlimited freedom. I spent the summer after the eighth grade getting extremely intoxicated on various substances and partying in many different places, with many different people, while my parents thought I was at the mall all day, or swimming, or at the beach. Not to say I wasn’t doing those things, or that I wasn’t at those places a lot of the times, but definitely not under the conditions they imagined, that’s for sure. Life was just too exciting to pass up, a daily adventure; drugs, booze, girls, friends. This brought along everything that usually comes with excessive drinking and too much partying with too many people; fights, lost items, broken items, police problems, and all kinds of other problems. Except to me they weren’t problems, because I simply didn’t care. I lived my life as a young adolescent based solely on pleasure, chasing thrills on the daily. My parents were the ones who suffered in the background, and this I couldn’t see, as I was clearly blinded by the thick veil of ignorance I had decided to cover my eyes with. What was my parents’ suffering at home, in such a distant place, when I was here now, in the moment, drugged up, tripping, feeling like I was part of a crew, part of the fun we were having, part of an unstoppable force, the unfiltered energy of youth? I realized that my music was shifting, it was no longer so much about solutions, the lyrics I was writing had ceased to be about finding a solution to the world’s problems. My rebel energy was being incorrectly applied, it was becoming confused and intertwined with this reckless and restless energy which surrounded me. I thought that we were going against the system, and my music was defiant, as if this was the life that truly free individuals were meant to live. I was so, so blind. I couldn’t see that my friends and I were simply victims of the system, rebellious kids full of anger and rage and the desire to let it out, full of dissatisfaction, drowning in alcohol and drugs, avoiding any real self-reflection. I felt like I was on top of the world, and it was only much later when I realized I had been living in a very low state for much too long.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 19.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 17: Why Hip-Hop? (Part 1)

I was born in the beautiful, extremely hot and tropical country of Honduras. Honduras is a small third world country in Central America, and apart from being an amazing country in many aspects, rich in natural resources, it unfortunately also suffers greatly from ongoing gang activity and violence, as well as shameless government corruption. For various reasons my parents emigrated to Vancouver, Canada in 2004, at the time when I was around ten years old. That changed my life in various ways, both good and bad (although I see now that nothing is really bad in the end), as I grew up getting myself into tons of trouble due to my rebellion and stupidity. Years and years seemingly were wasted on pointless pleasure and pain, pleasure and pain over and over again. However, what I’ve come to realize over the years is that eventually, all of life’s victories and failures, all the mistakes we make, everything realigns into perfect harmony, and everything balances out. We need to make mistakes in order to learn, and if we never acted stupidly, we could never analyze our past behavior with much depth, since there wouldn’t be much need, and we might never feel deeply motivated to change at all. I see this clearly in my own life. I still have a lot of changes to make, but I’ve changed a lot in the past few years. Most people who I meet nowadays would never guess that I used to live the way that I did before. This shows me that we all have the power to change, even in a small period of time, through small efforts, through daily goals which increase our willpower, and in turn our overall well-being. It’s an exciting idea to discover, and I thank God for being blessed with the power to make it real in my life. The supposed ‘misfortunes’ that life has presented me with have actually provided me with an insane number of examples of my own previous stupidity. I keep these safely stored in my memory, as it is clear to me that if I never lived through some of the things I have, I probably would have never felt the need to change my self-destructive behavior. Many people who have never lived through such negative experiences, or who have but haven’t applied the necessary importance and significance to them, still continue pursuing nothing but pleasure, awaiting the day when they will have to pay for all that pleasure with much pain. Others who were close to me have let their life of pleasure take them out of this world much too soon, whereas I have at least begun to try to change. I am far from perfect, but now at least I have a goal to achieve in life, which is constant self-improvement, and improvement of the world around me. Changing the world is something we all do at every second, at every single moment and with every interaction. If you or I had not been born on this planet during this exact lifetime and period in history, billions of lives would be completely different right now and forever. Just contemplate the depth of that truth for a moment. The only way we can change the world day by day, action by action, is to work on ourselves on a moment-to-moment basis, on letting our inner light shine. This light is something spiritual, the very essence of being, and the inspiration for what I do. But I’ll stop getting ahead of myself now and get back to my story, to a time when I had no concept of these ideas. Growing up in Vancouver I became fascinated with hip hop from a young age. I just remember becoming obsessed with music in general, ever since the good old days when getting stoned was a novelty which felt almost like tripping, and music sounded so mind-blowingly great that I could pick up every note as I listened for hours in utter amazement. To this day, my love for all genres of music has grown and continues growing daily, but I mostly dig decades into the past as opposed to following the new music trends that come out nowadays. It seems we are slowly transitioning into an age in which music is not so much a tool for expression as much as a tool for financial gain and propaganda, but we’ll get to that sad subject again at another time. Although no music is as relaxed and uplifting as Bob Marley’s, or as psychedelic and epic as Pink Floyd’s music, there is nothing that can compare with hip-hip in a few specific ways, in certain aspects. Hip-hop has always blown me away since it makes you just get up and move, voluntarily or involuntarily, you begin to move. Your head, your feet, whatever it is. The rhythm of hip-hop has the power to move one’s soul. Rhythm is so important to rap, that the word “rap” in itself is actually an acronym for “rhythm and poetry”, or at least it is to me, and that’s what I titled the first mixtape I ever released. The other amazing thing about hip-hop is how much content can fit into a verse, more than double the content of what could be sung by an R&B singer on the same track. There are many examples of this in collaborations between rappers and singers. A forty-second verse of a track can be used to make a bold statement, if every syllable is packed in with a meaningful word, instead of resorting to blurting out curse words every five seconds in order to complete a rhyme. I often feel sorry for listeners of modern day rap, who have to bear the dumbed down raps of the so-called “entertainers” that are praised today and promoted by mainstream hip-hop culture. I try not to judge, as it’s part of my self rehabilitation and spiritual work, but the truth can’t be denied, and it must be expressed. It’s sad to see that music has been reduced to meaningless noise, to another petty product, packaged and promoted for maximum profit. I’m not saying that hip hop was all good in its ‘golden days’ either. It seems amazing to me now how I grew up on hip hop and knew all there was to know about it; rapping became my life, and ‘rapper’ became my early identity, something I identified as, but I couldn’t see the problem that was slowly building up within me. It turned out that along with my love for rapping as a form of expressing ideas and thoughts, feelings and concepts, I grew accustomed to a lot of negative aspects of hip hop culture, a truth which I finally came to accept after a great deal of introspection, much, much later in life.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 18.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 16: Notes From Past Months.

I wonder why God wanted Adam and Eve to live in ignorance. It seems that once the snake showed up it opened their eyes to the fact that God lied. He had told them that if they ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree they would surely die. As we know though, they didn’t die. Instead they gained insight into the nature of good and evil, they awoke from a dream of ignorance. So does God want us to be ignorant? It is a funny concept to imagine. We think of this as unfair, that God would hold back the truth from us in order to protect us. We feel that, although the truth may be uncomfortable, although it might destroy us, we want to know it. We do not want to be deprived of the truth, and we see it as a basic right. Why, then, do we hide the truth of the nature of things from our children until we deem them old enough to understand fully? Why do we consider our behavior just but God’s unjust? This could be one justification for God’s apparent lie, that we would die if we attempted to eat from the tree. Is it a good enough excuse though? And why should truth be hidden from us if it is good? If it is good and we were made in God’s image, in the image of all that is good, then why should we be sheltered from good? Is there some bad within good that we are not yet ready to understand? This could be the case. After all, the tree which imparted knowledge onto Adam and Eve was the tree of knowledge of good and evil, not of the knowledge of good. It seems that knowledge in itself cannot be only of good or of evil, but that knowledge itself must include both. Since this “knowledge” is dual in its very essence, we can assume that this knowledge is part of the dual creation. I think this is precisely where we can draw the line between knowledge and wisdom. Perhaps knowledge seems good to our limited perception, but it is actually knowledge of an imperfect world, therefore it is imperfect knowledge. In this dual universe, everything is both good and bad, positive and negative, yin and yang. All good encompasses bad within it, and all bad encompasses good within it. All includes all else, and for this reason this knowledge was dangerous. It all depends on the specific situation.

Don’t allow the idea of healthy living to become a completely unhealthy obsession caused by a chronic phobia of disease. When we obsess over fear we develop many irrational fears and we become paranoid. When we worry non-stop about what we need to do next, about how we will survive the next day, when we allow these things to stress us out, what we are doing is unconsciously affirming that we are at the mercy of this body and its ailments, that we are victims of our karma. Similarly, when waste our thoughts on dreadful thoughts of disease our minds become diseased. We are refusing divine protection by worrying about things which are out of our control. People love to bash faith nowadays as it is seen as unscientific. But faith is necessary, and the mystic knows this. Faith is what keeps on going when nothing seems to be going our way. Faith is what keeps devotees on their divine search, even while facing ridicule and sometimes violent persecution for being comfortable with questioning everything and stepping outside of the box. Don’t save up so much money that you can’t ever enjoy since you can’t stop working, you must pay your debts. Don’t let societal norms dictate the way you should conduct yourself. Don’t let other people manipulate you into doing things to serve their selfish purposes by making you feel guilty or responsible for their troubles. Don’t allow guilt or regret to help you back. Remember that, although the present is a representation of your past and future – your memories and dreams as well as future aspirations-

Don’t feel like you can’t tell people how you feel about a certain issue because you will be seen as a hypocrite. Sometimes we feel like, because we’ve acted in a certain way in the past, we’re not able to express any different sentiments or ideas because we are simply preaching what we don’t practice. This is not the case. Life’s obstacles and problems, even those created directly by us, all come our way so that we may learn a lesson. If we fail to learn the lesson then the problem will keep on showing up in different ways. Once we learn the lesson, yes, the point is to live it. But with all goals, sometimes we fail, and someone who is on a righteous path might make a mistake once in a while. Does this make this person more impure than those who make mistakes all the time without feeling any regret for it at all? Of course not. We should not live with a feeling that we cannot be honest about the values we hold just because we are doomed to be labeled as different than that. A murderer might repent after many years of introspection. Taking someone’s life might have seemed to be justified at the time when the crime was committed, but he might have come upon some common sense, perhaps during his time being locked up. Isn’t that supposed to be the whole point of locking people up?

Sometimes I feel that God isn’t real and neither is religion. I feel like God might be just an idea that people have created in order to feel better, and that the system has decided to promote in order to keep people enslaved. As someone who values freedom, it’s hard for me to accept God as a tyrant, as a person who dictates what we must and must not do, down to what we wear and how we cut our hair. Looking around though I have a strong feeling that there is a higher power than us. But could this feeling arise in so many of us because of a mass dissatisfaction with the current state of the world as it is? How do we find out whether the old religious stories told us by our parents and grandparents, be they from the Bible or any other ancient book, have any basis in fact? Is history true in the way we know it or could its teaching have been manipulated from centuries ago in order to favor the side telling it? I feel like God and religion would be the perfect tool for mass control. It prescribes ways to live and not to live, and it insists that if one does not follow certain laws then one is subject to eternal misery and pain. This alone is enough to fill a person with overwhelming fear.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 17.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 15: What’s the Point of It All?

Sometimes we wonder why we should even try, we awake with this doubt, with its accompanying thoughts and feelings, they hold us down to our comfortable beds, comfortably numb but held down by our own weight. The room’s a mess, the whole house even, for days and weeks on end, for months, time flies and nothing gets done, yet everything happens, every day and night — we just don’t seem to be in control of what happens. It reminds us of our own dissatisfaction with ourselves, with the daily routine, of the resistance within us, that seductive, deceiving demon who thrives off of shaming and ridiculing us for even dreaming of dreaming our dreams at all, not to mention really dreaming them, or drastically turning them into reality. Even if we can beat this devil and stroll triumphantly out of hell, succeeding in our primordial task of completely demolishing resistance and getting started with our sacred journey, even after this moment divine ecstasy of finally beginning, too often we come to find, after a rather short interval of time usually, that results rarely turn out the way we initially planned them, or worse, that things always go wrong! This could go for your day or for any long-term project. It can be applied to life in general, its unexpected and unprecedented. We complain, but that’s how we’ve come to like it, how things ought to be even. But forget it, things always seem to go wrong exclusively for us! We make a fuss, we kick and cuss at the sky, we ask why and we cry like cosmic babies to Father God, or to mother helplessness, but in a frenzy of agony and anger mixed together nonetheless, no matter who we’re kicking and yelling at. We’re really yelling at ourselves though. We recognize our enemy as ourselves, deep down inside all of us do, and this frustrates us more than anything because we’re in denial, we don’t want to get out of our comfort zone and start being who we are meant to be, whether this means a dramatic transformation, or just being in the now, enjoying the day without wishing we were elsewhere, or nowhere. Let’s take a moment to think back. Did we go all the way with it, really go all the way, or did we do things without applying the correct dose of concentration, or without adopting the correct attitude towards the matter? Ideas may float through our mental horizons ceaselessly, but they may not even turn out in any way at all in real life, seeing as how they never get started. Sometimes people are about to make great success in internally defeating resistance, yet outer circumstances may prevent them from making this final ascension. The tragedy of the human condition keeps us cynically inspired with lethargy, with hate and with an attitude of not being able to care less, but which really masks a deep care for the world and its inhabitants, along with a fear for yourself and for anyone you love, fear that they could ever experience such horrors. People are dying all around us, everyone pretending they can hold it together, everyone keeping busy, in a rush, chasing the next thrill, everyone addicted to a chemical, a pill. No one can stop for the moment and be free, without fidgeting with their phone or shaking their leg. Some part of us must remain busy, we must hold an appearance and we must never be vulnerable. We are trying to cover up the truth with massive amounts of lies, and it shows. But who cares if others can tell? Who really cares? They can’t even tell, they themselves being too busy digging into, or covering up, their own problematic psyches just like you are. Is there a meaning to life beyond a high, beyond a trip, beyond a mystical moment of oneness? Is there more to God than a vision of Jesus, or of Buddha, or of a prophet from ancient times? Is there more to life than a vision, more than the petty lies we tell ourselves and each other? Or are these produced in the mind? Could the people who hear voices telling them to kill their families be hearing the same voices that the ancients heard when they passed their sons through fire to please the gods? Could it even be the same voice that commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac? Or could these be devils, while this was in fact, the divine voice of God? I don’t lean to either opinion, since I can’t speculate on the matter, but it is definitely strange and disturbing to think about.  We wonder what all this evil means, we might even accept that it’s all the suffering of the world comes down to our evil doing, our evil being which is inherent within us all, but we simply can’t accept all the seemingly meaningless cruelty of it all, we can’t come to grips with the bare facts of life. These thoughts can cripple us and resistance comes back in a big way, along with its brother fear and many more cousins who aren’t playing around with your sanity. These little troublemakers might have you questioning things like ‘what’s the use of enjoying our own lives as millions of others suffer?’ As we live, others die, often from unjust causes, from political corruption and murder, but more so from corruptions of the human mind, from a loss of control over one’s own genocidal emotions. One man without the proper restraint on his own destructive emotions is a potential danger to everyone around him and even for many generations to follow him. How are we not guaranteed not to go astray if we are influence by hatred and distrust for life? Self-control is key, both to fighting resistance, and to controlling what we create once we beat it. A word, a deed, a piece of art, or of literature — these are all realities which we bring to life from the creative and collective unconscious. We are all projecting our realities onto any and every external object we come into contact with, we see things and smell things and feel things according to our own specific reality throughout our lifespan on this earth, during this incarnation. We think we all share the same senses, and indeed we do, but truly there are never-ending sets of variations of these senses. But is there more to these senses that we believe we know and trust? I for one think we should all try to answer this question truthfully to ourselves, before we ever decide that life is completely senseless.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 16.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 14: Get Right with Life, You Are Not Your Problems.

Times are hard and times are great. We all have learned a lesson following from a mistake. One man’s trash is the next man’s treasure. One man’s pain could be another’s biggest pleasure. We all have invisible powers that motivate us, forces that rejuvenate us and power us through life, and forces that drain us and leave us shattered. We all have incredible strength which is still only in potential form, we all have genius ideas that stray from the norm. We all have a fight to face, a cross to carry, we’ve fallen from grace. Yet we are divine, our dual nature keeps us in constant motion like two electrical poles, properly aligned. We all affect everybody we meet, even if we don’t bother to stop and speak. We are all intertwined. We provoke. We all know we don’t know, yet sometimes we all take way too seriously this cosmic joke. Don’t get me wrong, every second is the greatest blessing, plus responsibility, we must take care of ourselves, of our lives, of the consciousness we’ve been gifted with. None of us are an island, we are all connected and our lives are not our own, yet we are each responsible for us. None of our lives matter more than any other life, yet we all matter equally just the same. Though we may store different mental programs in our brains, the Spirit at our core is forever the same. We all think that we’re losing at some point when we’ve gained something priceless and sacred beyond just a name. We all cling to the past, we don’t lead the dead rest. The dead days of killing time, reminisce on yesterday. Why not try to live in the now? Let me remind you like the mynah birds on Huxley’s ‘Island.’ Be in the now, we can do the right thing now. Because remember, times are good and bad together, life and death are taking places simultaneously at every instant. As one celebrates, another mourns. Can this be reality? Can instability be truth? The truth is beyond this. The truth is elevated so high that it is beyond any separation. How can one laugh and one cry beside him? How can a man be free at the expense of slaves? The truth is a state where there is no pain, there is neither any pleasure in the sense that we know it. Truth is beyond the sensual, so it is forgotten. Reconnect to the source and see. Learn to let go into it and listen. The quieter you become the more you can hear. Hear the sound of the birds singing, of the laugh of a loved one, see the smile on the faces of your children as you come home. Appreciate these things, be thankful for life and all that it brings. Realize there is nothing more than this. Be conscious of the now, because everything passes as a fleeting glimpse, of love and hate and dissatisfaction, way too often. Don’t attempt to find meaning to your life, instead realize that your life is its own meaning. Your life is your own in order so that you could live it, so that you could love living it and love the game of life, or at least to accept it along with all its suffering, understanding there is always a greater power within you and without you. Remain at peace as life goes on, always in the now. Everything has multiple dimensions, we often can’t see the reasons for the things that happen in our lives, we can’t see why such a tragedy had to happen to us? But really, why should it happen to anyone else? We are all one human species and things happen for reasons that are beyond our control. We have free will, at least it seems we do, and the way in which we all choose to exercise it is the only cause of evil on this planet. We are stuck in wordy dissatisfaction, unable to confront our lower natures, unable to bring our noblest ideas to reality in our own lives. What can we do to solve all of this? All long-term, organized attempt is always bound to become corrupted and fail. What is needed is that we all help wake each other up, one by one, to the fact that we can no longer go on ignoring what we know to be the right thing. We need to do the right thing now, wherever we are but now. Doing what’s right and necessary is the one thing we simply cannot afford to leave for later, even for one moment longer. Just as I finish writing this and am ready to post it up I realize the internet is not working. It’s about to be midnight here so technically I failed today (or yesterday) since I didn’t post before the next day. Things happen though, so although I wish I would have wrote and posted today’s piece earlier, I gotta calm my frustration and come to terms with the fact that it happened for a reason. I won’t count it as a failure for now, and I’ll take note to try to do my writing earlier. That’s something I’ve been working on for a while now, and still I got a lot of progress to make. On controlling my emotions, especially anger and frustration. We take so many things for granted, just like electronics, electricity, internet, cable. When these things stop working we get irritated, we even get aggressive, some of us act like the world is over. Even these small things we can use as reminders of how we have to work on our attention, on staying alert in our consciousness, on not only doing what’s right, in the moment, but rather being right with life at all times, holding no grudges, being thankful for the way things have played out. There’s a lot of injustice in life, but we can’t grow bitter as we ignore our own blessings and lessons.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 15.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 13: Immigrating to Canada, Pressure from Parents.

I was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I lived in Honduras, both in Tegucigalpa, the capital, as well as San Pedro Sula, the industrial capital, for ten years before my family immigrated to Canada. My father studied economy and received his Master’s Degree. He is a very intellectually driven man who takes pride in his understanding of the world, of business and of money. He left a job with the United Nations, working on humanitarian projects throughout my birth country of Honduras, and moved to Canada where he struggled to find work. With help from a job agency he was able to get odd jobs here and there, finally settling at a fireplace factory. Apart from having to wake up in the early cold which we wasn’t used to for a job which he was ridiculously overqualified for, my dad was also not used to carrying heavy machinery and equipment at work. A year or so after he began working there he found out he had a hernia and had to have surgery for it. Thankfully he was fine, and nowadays he has a much better job at a bank, which suits him a bit better for sure. Despite his temper, my father is really someone I greatly admire due to his determination to make ethical decisions in life. My father believes in doing everything right, in the way it needs to be done. Growing up I always wondered why I was so different from my father, but lately I’ve been having epiphanies which clearly show me just how similar we both are. We both have crazy ideas of unique projects. We both enjoy speaking to people and can talk non-stop when it comes to a topic we are passionate about. My dad is sort of extreme in a way, something I never wanted to admit for myself but which I need to come to terms with now. He tells me not to wear a beard when I fly so I don’t get seen as a threat, yet he wore a long beard when he was younger too. He tells me to play it safe and to study hard to have a promising career, to dedicate myself to it in order to get a head start while I’m still young, yet he left his home country in order to find his own way when he was young as well. That’s what led him up to his meeting with my mother, in the country of Honduras where my two brothers and I were all born. My mother’s family moved here from Nicaragua due to the Sandinista revolution which took place decades ago. My mother is a saint. She is a devoted follower of Christ and the Bible and she sacrificed much time apart from her work to make sure that we learn Biblical morals as well as practiced what we needed to know for school and did our homework. She always told me (and still does) that I have great potential which I waste by deciding to do things in a mediocre way. I never argued because I couldn’t deny it. I was never a big fan of school. As I started hanging out with my friends I started ignoring all the great times I had with my parents growing up and all they sacrificed for my brothers and I. My father always spoke to me in his native Portuguese so I was able to gain a fairly fluent understanding of it growing up. When I traveled to Brazil on my own for the larger part of a year I finally got some street practice, and I really felt free speaking Portuguese, I was feeling the Brazilian vibes. While in Rio, I was amazed at how hot it was, even hotter than San Pedro Sula in Honduras. While in Brazil, I first stayed in Sao Paulo at the home of a good family friend who I had never met, an old friend of my father who is a Baptist church pastor. He’s a sympathetic guy and he gave me some good life advice and treated me as his son while I was there. I’ve noticed that throughout life I’ve received such respectful treatment from many individuals as a result of their deep admiration for my father. For this reason I sometimes feel ashamed with my own performance in life thus far. I feel the pressure of great expectations which my parents have for me. If they were careless or irresponsible parents I never would have felt so guilty for going astray from their teachings. One of the saddest feelings of my life has been that of not being able to properly connect with my parents. Their religious beliefs make them very close minded when it comes to anything spiritual. It was only in recent years, once my dad started attending a Kabbalah class at the synagogue he is attending, that he began investigating deeper into mysticism and the idea that maybe things are a lot deeper than he had thought they were. For many years now he has considered himself a Jew, and has wanted to influence my brothers and I into undergoing complete conversion to Judaism, which he believes to be the true path to God. My mother is quite convinced with Jesus Christ’s promise of salvation for those who believe and pray in His name. She doesn’t feel the need for us to further investigate into the nature of God or the universe, and her closed mindset to these sorts of concepts bother my father and lead to great discord. But if their belief in God leads to discord whenever expressed between the two, then is it really serving its purpose at all? Spirituality is not something exclusive which can be taken up and dropped as a habit or custom can. Spirituality is everything, it is the essence of who we are. It is not a philosophical label or a religious sect, it is the realization that we are spiritual beings and that there is a spiritual purpose and significance to everything that happens, to every physical phenomenon. Spirituality means having a deeper connection to the true causes of things, to the nature of the effects and which causes they come from. Spirituality means balancing what needs to be done on this Earth with the time we need to spend contemplating heavenly concepts. Spirituality is balance in all aspects of life. A spiritual life is one which is well balanced and allowed to flourish, a life which is not lived for the sake of fulfilling vain worldly desires, but one which is lived for the purpose of doing what needs to be done when it needs to be done. At least I find satisfaction in knowing that both my parents are people who are committed to living righteously; hopefully this can overcome any unreasonable habits that might come along with absolute belief in a single religion.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 14.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 12: Impermanence of Life, Strength of Spirit.

Life flows from one moment to the next, from pleasure to pain, non-stop. We wonder what it all means, what is the right way to live, or the wrong way. We wonder if the things that happen are meant to be, if the lives we live mean anything at all or if everything is random. Are we living out our best potential? Is there even such a thing, or were we destined from the very beginning to be none other than who we are? We ask ourselves these questions, sometimes voluntarily, other times we are forced to meditate on these things. We search for answers with a reckless sense of excitement, or we drown ourselves in massive amounts of anything that kills the pressure of not knowing, the pounding, beating presence of uncertainty, of the anxiety that comes with the human condition, calling out from within us, demanding to be at least acknowledged, if not respected. Pain is nothing to run from, and neither is confusion. Few of us choose to analyze our confusion, but when we do, we see connections in the most bizarre circumstances, we see how events from the past have taught us valuable lessons for the now. We see that confusion is unnecessary. If we are to be like children, like God’s children, if we are to be pure like children, unprejudiced and ready to open our hearts to life just like children are, then we must have a sense of wonder like that which children possess. We wonder why good and bad have to exist, but it makes sense in any movie we watch. Life is a movie too, changing pictures on the screen of awareness, the spirit that animates, that emanates its living light into everything that is. We all know this, but we take it for granted. We understand the concept, but we don’t think it realer than the situations of our daily social lives. This spirit is not afraid, it has never become corrupted by anything that has happened in anyone’s life. A divine spark cannot be damaged, it can only be forgotten by the very being which it gives life to. Where does our life come from, or the energy which keeps our hearts beating, or the planets rotating around the sun, or our lungs breathing air? It is all a mystery, something which we humans have not manufactured. How many of us can honestly say we are dedicated to studying this mystery of life to the best of our abilities? I am not talking about an obsession with everything that comes along in our lives, I mean a committed mentality of making the best of every situation we face, analyzing everything completely honestly, and learning life’s lessons as sincerely as possible as we go along, making the necessary changes at every stage of life depending on the lessons we learn? We’re all capable of this, but we don’t give this innate ability of ours the respect it deserves, nor the proper use. How deep do we want to dive into our insecurities, into our inferiority or superiority complexes, into our toxic traits and the vicious habits which keep us trapped with no conceivable way of breaking free? Are we willing to radically alter our lives whenever we know it’s needed, or will we keep on living life as if we will live forever, as if there is no possible way in which we could live life other than the way we are living it now? Overworking, not sleeping enough, not eating right, neglecting health for the chase of money and status, rejecting even the possibility of love for cheap thrills all while avoiding any real commitment in life? Are we afraid to utterly fuck up if we commit to a relationship with that decent girl who cares for us, or to that plan of quitting that harmful habit we engage in, or to that vision of chasing our dreams and making them come true no matter what? Are we too afraid to live life? Again, things come and go, we are born and then we die, we win some, we lose some. Everything is yin and yang, black and white, but the more we connect with our Spirit, that part of us which is godly and beyond all knowledge of duality, the more we can be free of attachment and aversion, and the easier it will become to endure life’s blows and tragedies, as well as its senseless pleasures and temptations into evil. I’ve been meditating for a while now, and I think that, if mediation is getting in touch with the silence and peace that come with our inner Spirit, our innermost, realest Self, then prayer could be something which might be very beneficial to engage in before meditation. Prayer is sort of speaking to God or the universe, while meditation is listening. So maybe an answer can come somehow. I don’t know for sure who or what God is, if he is a personal being we can relate to, or if he is an energy which pervades everything there is, or maybe somehow both in one. But that shouldn’t stop me from praying to God, at least to be thankful for every blessing in my life, to acknowledge that I have a lot to learn and much to change in myself, and committing myself to the highest power in the universe, most likely the creator of all we know, and even that we have no explanation for, to do my best and to do what I know is right. I think a spiritual connection to life is needed in order to survive the hardships of life with a sane mind, or if not spiritual, at least a sense of a higher meaning or purpose to life, which I don’t as something which could be viewed other than spiritually, but then again we are all different and have all kinds of ideas. I’ll just keep on working on connecting more with that innermost part of myself, that part which always knows what is right, and I know that life, although it may not be easy, will always be more and more meaningful to me.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 13.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 11: Productive Weed Highs.

So yesterday I wrote a bit about how, not wanting to quit smoking weed, I decided a few years back to try to spend most of my stoned time doing something creative, something productive. The reason I ended up writing about that yesterday was because I started by writing about the fact that, at least for me, weed shares one quality with psychedelics in that, in a very subtle way, it lets you be more in tune with what you know is the right thing. Things that I would ignore about my life would often become perfectly clear to me. One thing that became very clear was that I was spending too much of my stoned time just sitting back and listening to music. Now, don’t get me wrong, listening to music is quite possibly my favorite thing ever to do while I get stoned. But, you see, that’s exactly why I chose to cut down on that. I’m not suggesting that anyone should the the same, since there is nothing wrong with simply sitting back to relax to some trippy chill music when you’re taking flight! The thing about me is that, I really want to make certain things happen. I’ve always wanted to be a musician, and in fact I have a lot of albums recorded, some of which you can hear on this site by the way, but during that time I was no longer doing music. I was trying to find another outlet to express certain ideas about life and the world, since I was now expanding my horizons and beginning to learn a lot about spirituality, as well as living life in a much different way. I didn’t have many friends in Vancouver at this point, having been gone for so long, but I was enjoying this newfound peace of solitude. During the evenings and during my lunch breaks from work I would video chat with Maria who had stayed back in Honduras. We spoke pretty much every day, a few times a day. We couldn’t wait to be together again, and I was motivated to save money instead of blowing it all on drinking and all the bad decisions that come from that, so I was beginning to experiment with some solitude. The people in my life were my four co-workers at the immigration consulting firm, my parents back home, and my wife Maria on video chat (she was my fiance back then). I felt like I had a mission, I was a lot more mature now. So during those days of smoking at the New Amsterdam lounge, when instrumental tracks came on, by Ravi Shankar mostly, or some binaural beats which are said to be set at certain frequencies to relax the brain waves, I would think deeply, and it was during those moments that I began to notate my ideas on my cell phone notepad. I grew tired of this notepad since I had to press these small buttons and I couldn’t get my ideas down quick enough, and I also got tired of writing only when instrumental tracks came on during the general song library shuffle. So I started carrying my notebook with me to work and keeping it in my bad while I worked, and in the afternoon as I sat there, usually by the window, in peace, surrounded by other stoners, I began to write many thoughts down. Usually I would listen to “The Spirit of India”, the full album by Ravi Shankar, instrumental music, peaceful and serene. It got me in a relaxed mood every time, and I wrote all kinds of thoughts during those days. I wrote about my personal life and mind, I wrote thoughts on the world and life as a whole, thoughts on everything that came to mind, that captured my attention at that moment. I became fond of writing during those days, and I began writing a daily journal with diligence. I was determined to use my high times productively, to make the most of the creativity that the cannabis brought up from within me. It relaxed me and allowed me to write freely, about anything, whatever, just to write. It felt like the beginning of a new era for me, like something brand new, something fresh was beginning to blossom. Needless to say I’ve been writing in some way or another to this day. I simply can’t forget those days when I began this venture, the sitar sound in my ears, devoid of any words, the majestic melodies contained within Shankar’s masterpiece brought me to ecstasy as I inhaled huge puffs of chronic smoke, held them in for a few seconds, and then exhaled. I would feel my eyes close on themselves while I was only about halfway through the joint as I stared at it contemplating, asking myself “Damn, can even I finish this?” I finished every time, of course, but I can’t say it wasn’t always a challenge. In the end I always had a few pages written, and some ashes I’d have to brush off what I just wrote. The point had been to roll a joint that would be hard to finish, and that I had definitely done. This definitely allowed me to settle my thoughts and write with enough time not to feel rushed at all, the joint had to be just the perfect size, King Size, RAW. At a certain point the high and the music and my writing became completely merged and intertwined with each other, I felt the melody getting me higher and I couldn’t put the pen down! These kinds of experiences always put me in such an amazing mood. On sunny days I would look out the window at the park on Victory Square, at how the grass and the leaves shone brightly as yellow beams of light sparkling as if moved by the wind. On rainy days I would just watch the rain fall over the gray streets and that was satisfaction in itself. What I feel is good about such experiences is that they remind us of the beauty of life which is everywhere, in the seemingly simple things, the trees, the sun, the clouds, the rain. These beautiful things, God’s creation, constantly inspired me to write. It was like poetry was imparted to me by nature, in order to have it written in my journal. Maybe if I read back on that journal entry now I’d find myself in that timeless moment once again.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 12.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 10: Cannabis, Self-Reflection and Writing.

The culture here in Honduras is very different from the one I experienced and became a part of in Canada. Most of the experiences which have truly shaped my personality the most up to this point are those that I had in Canada after my parents decided to move there when I was ten, at least until recently when I returned here to be married to my beautiful wife Maria. I grew up in Vancouver, BC, more specifically in the Surrey area. Many things that I grew up seeing as totally normal were things that completely shocked and terrified my folks, such as my appreciation for cannabis which started at the young age of thirteen. My parents went through a lot of suffering due to my love for that sweet BC bud. I always had to, and did, keep in mind that my parents come from Latin American countries where illegal “drugs” are associated with tremendous levels of organized crime and violence; it is a business which is fully controlled by gangs. In Canada, on the other hand, everyone and their mom smokes bud, or even sells it. Seeing my mom suffer like she did when I was finally caught selling at school made me never sell weed again, at least as a job, even though I think the laws which make it illegal in the first place are completely bogus. I couldn’t be happier about the fact that cannabis is now legal in Canada, nationwide, since October 17th, 2018. This is necessary in order to break the stigma, in order to open the world’s eyes to the fact that cannabis is not a dangerous drug, but rather a powerful and potent plant in many respects. Just like everything in this planet, it can definitely be abused, so it must be used with moderation. Balance is something which needs to be applied to every area of our lives if we want peace of mind. My belief is that no substance in the world is completely bad or good. Some cause more suffering than the experience is worth, and some ease the suffering of many people as long as they’re used properly and treated with respect. It is all about the way anything is used, just like the internet, or the TV, or social media. Just because so many people feel empty and alone or misunderstood in this dull world so devoid of life to the point where they begin desperately abusing weed, or alcohol, or pharmaceuticals, or any other substance for that matter, is not a valid reason to label the substance itself as evil. And if this was the actual reason why a substance like weed was ever illegal then all pharmaceuticals would have been completely forgotten as soon as the dreaded opioid epidemic reached massive proportions. I’m sure glad the fight is over in Canada, but I’m also speaking for and to the rest of the world where people who just want to chill a bit, as well as people who really need their weed have their basic rights denied and as branded as criminals. In reality, most problems related to pot use are due to its illegal status, including my own problem with my school and even with my parents’ view of it. Apart from that some people say that weed makes you lazy. I’ve thought about this in depth and to explain I must tell a bit of my own story. Cannabis has been a trusted friend to me for a very long time. The effect one feels after consuming this plant can obviously vary immensely from person to person depending on mental state and many other factors, but its general effect is usually one of slight sedation as well as of comfort or relaxation. At times I’ve felt as if I were becoming completely immersed in a bunch of blankets, as if I were sinking into my warm bed or something as soft as clouds, as if I were fading away into a dream as I lie in under the stars, my eyelids slowly closing over my vision. Most of my most wonderful weed memories are from my earliest days with it.. One cool thing I notice is that although cannabis makes one feel so wonderfully comfortable, it does not blind one to the facts of life, and in a way it shares an important quality with all psychedelics: the ability to bring you into deeper contemplation of your own thoughts. Interesting ideas seem to envelop my attention to the exclusion of everything else around me. I started to figure this out for the most part after having the realization that I didn’t want to live a life of time-wasting any more. This realization hit me the most while high one day, when I realized that I was losing motivation to work towards my goals, and I couldn’t lie to myself about it. This thought made me evaluate my daily activities and be honest with myself about when I was wasting time. Then I would do something more productive during that time in order to improve at being productive. I realized that all the time I was spending on weed after work might be holding me back and preventing me from doing more important things ,along with time wasted scrolling on Facebook or partying with friends. After work I would walk two blocks from Homer Street over to West Hastings on the corner of Victory Square in Downtown Vancouver. After purchasing the product at the corner dispensary I would merely cross the street to the New Amsterdam Café, a lounge where anyone can come in, and for a five dollar fee, smoke freely in a comfortable and secure area with some trippy paintings on the walls. Music is always playing, munchies are for sale, and any smoking or vaping equipment is provided if needed. There are large spots with conjoined couches for big groups, and there are also individual couches for the more introspective stoners. I usually went alone since I went right after work, and plus I preferred to blaze alone in those days anyway my main reason for being back in Vancouver being to save up for my then upcoming wedding. I would walk in like I was home and remove my tedious tie and jacket with a sigh of sweet relief as I proceeded to plop down on one of the free couches. Then I would continue to unpack everything I needed: the weed came out of my pocket, the grinder and papers were in my bag along with the lighter, and I was already deciding what music I would listen to for the next little while om my 160GB iPod Classic. After deciding on an album or a playlist I would commence the rolling of the humongous joint which was about to be blazed up. Since I had been waiting all day to smoke (the job I was currently working allowed me no opportunity to wake ‘n bake), this session was always meant to take me all the way. I would properly pack up a full KingSize RAW paper and roll a fat joint longer than my index finger, ending it with a nice filter which I took my time to make with perfect precision. It was almost as if I were trying to last as long as possible without sparking the joint, as if the satisfaction were such that I just had to hold it off in order to feel it even more the second I lit it. It was during these relaxing times of stoned self-reflection that the idea of writing really began to take shape in my mind. More on this tomorrow though.

To be continue tomorrow, on Day 11.

~ Rebel Spirit