DAY 27 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Not sure what to write about tonight, really. I guess I’ll just write about everything going on right now. I’m uploading daily beats, I’m writing my daily words, I’m trying to exercise every second day, whether jogging or doing yoga. It feels weird doing everything sober though, since I’m so used to being stoned all the time. I’ve been feeling weird sensations in my chest when I move, as well as a general shortness of breath, nothing extreme but just annoying. At first it was making me go crazy with anxiety, but after researching for a bit I’ve become convinced that it has to do with me cutting down on weed since I see a lot of posts from ex-smokers of many years who share similar stories. It makes sense also because the discomfort started pretty much a few weeks after I first started my goal of cutting down on bud. I’ve been smoking weed since I was basically twelve, and I’m 27 now, so I have a lot of readjusting to do. I’ve learned some new things from my research, such as the fact that THC is a bronchodilator, meaning that it expands the airways in the lungs or something like that (I’m not the best at explaining medical terms) so quitting quickly can have the opposite effect on the lungs and cause bronchospasms. I haven’t smoked weed in about a month now, but my idea wasn’t to completely quit, just to switch to edibles and to cut down on my consumption in general. I guess what I’m experiencing is a combination of my lungs starting to heal from all the constant smoking over the years, as well as me feeling the effect of no longer having the bronchodilator effect of THC so often. It should pass with time from what I’ve read, but I’m definitely never going back to smoking the same way as I did before. In fact, I’ll only smoke once a month or something, if even that, and just eat way smaller doses of edibles, maybe just 2 days a week. It’s crazy, I never even knew this kind of thing could happen from quitting weed, and although I’m not blaming weed in any way, it just goes to show how nothing is meant to be abused, and everything has to be done or used in moderation. I was definitely abusing weed for so many years, it was good for everything and wasn’t harmful like other drugs. It made everything way more interesting and chill, so I just rolled with it. Ever since I’ve gotten really into spirituality, years ago, I’ve been planning on cutting down just because I realize that we have all we need within us, and that attachments are what cause suffering in life. A classic example is how a drug addict feels shitty I’d they can’t have their drug of choice, which in my case is weed. I now have to readjust to real life, and get back out into the world, leaving my peaceful inner world on the side for some time. This is actually why I finally made the decision to cut down, because I was planning to go hard with my music and to finally get serious about it make the dream happen. I for sure didn’t expect to have this kind of reaction though. Anyway, I’m not trying to complain, I just think that too many people, assuming that weed is all good and can cause no issues because it’s natural and relatively safe for recreational use, don’t bother to do any research, and end up abusing it in order to mask their real feelings and escape from uncomfortable realities that may cause anxiety of depression. As I’ve been learning from Carl Jung, anxiety is with us for a reason, so that we may analyze the way we are living and make a change, but if we just mask our anxiety and never face it, then what will happen when we finally decided to put that mask away? Will we be able to deal with all the unacknowledged anxiety that has been building within us? Well, it’s tough but I know I can do it, I know I got this. I just have to keep focusing on what I’m doing, creating dope music and expressing my deepest ideas and feelings through my lyrics, which is what I’ve always been inspired to do with my raps. I have a beautiful loving wife who supports me through all of life’s ups and downs, and I have a good family I can count on as well. I’m still healthy, thank God, apart from the aforementioned issues, so I gotta focus on exercising as often as I can and eating healthier as well. I know that everything will be okay in the end. Other than that, I’m just really excited about life and where this music thing will take me. I’m almost done my next album, Rebel Spirit, which will be released on all streaming platforms, and I’m really feeling how all the tracks are sounding so far. Oh, something else I’ve noticed during my sober days is that I’m getting really tired and sleepy at times. When I used to get high all the time I would sometimes stay up until 3 or 4am, just fascinated by whatever ideas I was learning or whatever music I was creating. Now I actually feel tired, as I do right now while I yawn, and I know that means it’s time to go to sleep. I guess it’s because things don’t seem so interesting anymore, even things I love with a passion, like philosophy and music, but I know this will pass with time, it’s just part of withdrawal from being used to constant weed stimulation. I’m not sure what else to write for now, but I suspect I’m close to finishing today’s thousand words, so I’ll just end this on a positive note. I wish everyone out there the best in life, stay balanced and healthy, and I pray you have the power to break any chains and attachments you feel you need to grow from. It’s not easy, but moving on to a new stage of life often requires painful sacrifices, leaving behind some of the things that we strongly identified with in the past. It’s time to grow, to become new, stronger, wiser people.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 26 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Day 26 of writing on my blog, nice. It’s also my fifteenth or sixteenth day of posting daily beats on Beatstars, and now that I have a decent catalogue of beats I have to start looking into marketing strategies to try to generate sales. One strategy is simply messaging artists and letting them know that I sell beats, probably including a few free beats they can use, obviously with a link to my beat store. I have to start searching for artists who are up and coming and whose beats match the ones I make in order to build solid business relationships so they keep on buying beats on the regular. In a way I’m happy because it feels like I’m finally starting my own business based around something I actually enjoy doing, making beats and just music in general. I’m tired of putting work in for already established companies that have nothing to do with my interests just to survive, so I know I have to put in the necessary work if I want to put and end to it for good and actually enjoy what I do for a living someday. For that reason I’m super excited to make this work. On the other hand, although I love hip-hop, from the hard beats to inspirational and thought provoking rhymes, I can’t say that I’m cool with a lot of the low effort noise that passes for rap these days, commercialized garbage promoting materialism. Unfortunately in order to promote your beats these days you have to pass them off as beats you can see some famous rapper spitting over, because if you just post it as a chill beat of happy or emotional or hard rap beat, you simply won’t get many views. This is why YouTube is super saturated with so many ‘type beat’ channels, where the title includes the name of rapper who would rap on this type of beat, along with a picture of the rapper. This is basically what I’ve been doing daily for the past two weeks, posting a beat in this format on both YouTube and Beatstars, and now I have to start marketing. The problem is that, although I do like my beats, I really would rather not post them in this way, but if I think about it for too long it feels like I’m just going back to my problem from years ago. See, I have a huge folder in my hard drive full of beats from as far back as 2011 when I first started making beats, and even thought they’re old now a lot of them are really dope, but I never released these beats in any way because my idea was to rap on them myself, not to get random rappers to rap what they want on them. See, I’ve always approached music, even my own music, as art, and I don’t like the idea of art being sold off, I’ve always wanted to release my music on my own. Unfortunately I never wrote enough rhymes to keep up with the insane amount of beats I made, and I almost always used other producers’ beats for my own tracks instead of my own, not because I didn’t like my own beats, but because the beats that fit my rapping style and content best are chill, jazzy sampled rap beats, like the ones I rapped over on my Running Rebel mixtape, whereas the beats that I produced for most of my life making music sound modern and electronic. I’ve always enjoyed making melodies from scratch, selecting the instruments and drums, and it’s only recently that I’m getting seriously into sampling instead. So my beats just sat there on my hard drive for so many years. I just got to thinking this year, I guess because I’ve grown increasingly annoyed and depressed with 9-to-5 life, that it really is time to start making a living from my music somehow, and I figured selling beats would be the most realistic way, since my rapping is not what’s most popular these days, I try to make it philosophical and inspiring, and I’m not willing to compromise that. I’ve come to peace that I might not make it as a huge success in the rap industry, and that’s okay because I enjoy doing it and I’ll keep at it no matter what. If I make it then great, if not then at least I shared my raps with whoever was willing to listen. Rap is based off of images these days, and I feel like I have too many complex ideas in my mind to just dumb myself down to be an image. The beats, on the other hand, can be made by anyone, it’s usually not a big deal since the producer is more of a behind-the-scenes person. It’s less likely that I need to sell out in order to make money on the beats side, and I’ll still be doing something I enjoy, so if I can make money making beats and that gives me the necessary time to really focus on my rapping without the need to compromise the truth, then that would be more than good enough for me. In a small way, this is why I feel shitty about putting my beats up with these random rappers’ pictures. I don’t even listen to them or like their music, so the beats are probably not even actually type beats for the artist names I post, it’s just kind of random names I choose based on what’s popular these days. Yeah, it feels wack, but no views means no sales. Hopefully as I start gaining traction I won’t need to be uploading my beats with these ridiculous names. In the meantime, I continue improving. I’ve got my new Arturia Keylab 61 mapped perfectly to FL Studio, I’ve mastered my MPC One at this point, and I’m making dope beats every day. I’m also doing daily guitar lessons so that I can eventually record myself playing and incorporate the live guitar sounds into my beats. Shout out to Justin Guitar for the super informative and easy to follow online courses, not to mention free. I really love the sound of the acoustic guitar, and that’s a big reason why I decided to learn to play it. Some of my favorite albums are Nick Drake’s albums, especially Pink Moon, and Norah Jones’ “Come Away With Me”, really acoustic albums, and I can’t wait to be able to create my own chill melodies in the guitar. It’s all about consistency and never quitting. If I keep up my daily practice and put the effort in I know I can’t fail, and I’m applying the same to my beat business and every new project I take on from now on.

much love,

~ rebel eye

DAY 25 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

These days it seems like mental health is being acknowledged and discussed more than ever before. It’s good in a way because we are getting more open to sharing our vulnerabilities, and we are becoming more open to understanding other people’s struggles. Is this because we are becoming more caring and understanding, or could it also be because more people than ever before are experiencing symptoms of mental afflictions? We are living in a time where people are isolating themselves in fear, fear of disease, fear of the government, fear of unprovoked evil. The world, in general, seems to be getting a lot more restless, and we are seeing hate and violence all around us, so it is natural for many people to retreat from life, in a way, to shut themselves in their minds, in their own little world with the people they love. Although mental health is being acknowledged, it is seen as something evil, even as a mental illness, when in reality this is not exactly the case. When we get physically hurt, the pain we feel is our body telling us that something is wrong, and according to Carl Jung, neurotic conditions such as anxiety and depression are also messages we are trying to convey to ourselves, messages not just from what’s hidden deep in our own minds, in our subconscious, but from what Jung called the collective unconscious. Jung’s famous idea of archetypes was something he arrived at by analyzing a lot of his patients’ dreams, as well as the different stories found in the books of the world’s different religions and mythologies. The main idea is that we all share a collective consciousness which is hidden from our day-to-day consciousness, much like our own subconscious is. Like the subconscious, the collective unconscious can also trigger strong impulses within us, the difference being that our own subconscious is made up of subliminal images and ideas that have stuck with us because of our own life experiences, whereas the collective unconscious holds images and ideas that are with us because we are part of a collective whole. According to Jung these ideas, or archetypes, come from the evolution of consciousness that mankind has lived through for who knows how many years. These strong values which have always been present in humanity don’t just disappear because we change the way in which outward society functions, they are still there within our psyche, influencing our personalities. These archetypes, such as building a good social structure or becoming mentally independent from our parents, are ingrained into us, and they make us feel as if there’s certain things in life that we absolutely must accomplish. Jung’s theory was that if we try to fight against these ingrained ideas, which can be referred to as the tasks of life which we all feel compelled to complete, then we will run into mental problems because we are choosing to live in a way which is contrary to what we are hardwired to become. It is true that we have free will, yet that doesn’t mean that all of our impulses will lead to our well-being. In this way of seeing neurotic disorders, we can perceive them as signs that we are not living correctly, that we are fighting against our true nature and our true calling. Often times this is because we are afraid of facing up to the tasks of life, and we try to deceive ourselves into thinking that we don’t need to achieve anything. We might convince ourselves of this by telling ourselves that the issues does not lie within us, that the issue is external, and therefore, since it can’t be fixed, we are doing the right thing by not getting involved. One of my favorite writers, Charles Bukowski, said “I don’t have any politics. I’m an observer.” In a way, I really liked it when I read that quote, because I’ve always felt this way myself. Bukowski was also an alcoholic, and analyzing that quote, along with his life, makes me wonder if he maybe had some demons of his own which he was too afraid to face. I can tell this is the case in my own life, when I analyze it through Jung’s theory. For years I’ve been getting stoned, simply because weed can make ideas a lot more interesting, it can make the inner world of my mind appear fresh and limitless, with everything the mind can conceive of and create. It also makes music and philosophy more interesting, my two favorite things to consume. I told myself that the world is fucked up, and that I didn’t need to complicate my life with it. I have my wife and I enjoy music and philosophy, so there’s not much else in the world for me other than possible trouble. Maybe I’ve really been hiding away from the world because of fear, fear of losing the foundation which I already have, or fear of unexpected trouble that could come my way in a world that’s growing increasingly turbulent. Carl Jung explains how, at the beginning of a neurotic disorder, the neurotic person might not feel too inconvenienced by avoiding life situations which may trigger anxiety, and in fact will feel some comfort in it, yet over time, as his or her life becomes routine, the person notices that something is wrong, because life has become restricted and closed off from the world. Because of the archetype which drives us to create social bonds and connections, the neurotic can’t help but feel distressed because, deep inside, from the collective unconscious, stems this feeling that they are not fulfilling something important which is imperative to their happiness as human beings. Being super interested in philosophy, psychology and spirituality, I’ve always known about and been a fan of Carl Jung, yet his body of work is so extensive and his ideas are so deep that they must be analyzed time and time again, and I had never really went too deep into what I’m discussing in this post today. However, as I research more into it, I have to admit that I do see myself in the image he paints of the neurotic person. This isn’t a reason to panic though, because again, anxiety is just a sign that change is needed, and that means there is hope for change.

DAY 24 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

I love to learn many things, and throughout my life I’ve been inspired to learn from many experiences and circumstances. It’s because of my ideas and decisions that I find myself in the place where I stand today. People, in general, express themselves in different ways, depending on their own life experiences, but who can know for certain, to the point of being able to advise others, what the right way to live life is, who can know what is the right thing to choose at any given moment in life. It’s easy to look at others’ mistakes or faults, from the outside, but it might not be as easy for them to notice these issues themselves. For example, the other day I was walking with my wife and I noticed that a little leaf had ended up on her hair somehow. She had probably been walking with it on her head for a while now, but since it was on the opposite side of where I was walking I didn’t notice it at first. However, as soon as I turned for some reason and looked at her straight on I noticed it right away and removed it. Of course, it’s not a big deal, nothing would happen if she would have just kept walking with the leaf on her head, but that’s not the point. The point is that it made me think, it made me realize that perhaps there’s things that we don’t notice about ourselves, yet might be easy for others to notice. Your hear is on your head, so it’s impossible to see it, at least the part of it that doesn’t slide down your face. Of course, my hair is my hair, so I should be more familiar with it than anyone else, yet for some reason, precisely because it’s mine, I can’t see a good part of it, while others easily can. In fact, I can never look directly at my own face, I can only see a reflection of myself in the mirror. Everyone else can see my real face though, even though it’s my face. If I have something on my face or hair, someone who looks at me can remove it, but it’s difficult for me to see whatever’s on myself. You might be familiar with the Bible quote “First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.” I love quotes like this, quotes that provide general wisdom on how to grow as human beings, because most of the time we make changes in our life depending on the situations we are facing, and even though we can’t know for sure what the right decision is at any given moment, if we are armed with real wisdom then we have less chance of making the wrong decision. We are always wondering what is the right way to navigate life, how can we become better? We often have doubts and insecurities that lead us to anxiety and indecision. That can be a problem, yes, but in reality, it comes down to how we look at things. Our indecision is a chance for us to analyze the situation further, maybe to seek advice from others who can relate to our situation. If someone has a suggestion for us, we should humbly listen. As long as we understand that we are in control of our lives, we have no reason to be afraid of any words that may come to us from anyone. On the contrary, we never know if a perfect stranger could be the messenger we needed in order to finally understand something we’ve been indecisive about for so long. We should humbly listen to advice, then analyze it to the best of our abilities, and finally make a decision. I’ve received lots of great pieces of advice throughout my life, some of which I have saved into the book of my memory, and some which I have unfortunately discarded and thrown into the trash. I probably could have saved myself some trouble if I had listened to some of those that I discarded, but changes can be both good and bad in the end, in the sense that, one can learn even from the worst mistakes, in the end it’s all up to you. Again, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I can not guarantee that any way of life is the right way, I can only share my own experiences, and I know that when things seem completely hopeless, usually that’s when we can dig deep into ourselves and find truth, find what we’re truly made of, we can reflect, we can get to truly know ourselves and grow, and eventually we can bounce back stronger than ever. The thing I wrote about how it’s easier to see someone else’s mistakes, and then the quote I posted about removing the beam from your own eye before removing it from others’ seem to be a bit contradictory, but so is life. We might be faced with a situation where we can easily remove someone’s obstacles for them, but is that always the right thing to do? Do we always know what’s best for others? Could we be doing them a disservice by preventing them from living their own lives and overcoming their own obstacles? Just as I said we should listen humbly to advice, we should also be as humble as we can when providing advice, we should not force others to follow in our footsteps, because even though we may have learned a specific lesson from our own life experience, we may not know everything that someone else has lived through, that has brought them to their own current experience, so we might not really be helping them as much as we think we are. Should we do all of our kids’ homework, for example, so that they will never learn anything? Should we shelter them from the evils of life, so that they will be paralyzed when shit finally does hit the fan? No, we should provide our humble advice, not in order to manipulate, just so that we can share what we know. From then on, it’s up to them, and if they’ve learned to listen to advice in a humble manner and then analyze it, rather than instantly rejecting anything that may contradict their beliefs, then maybe they might end up actually making a right decision, a right decision influenced by you, because you shared with love and not with force.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 23 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Kalvonix and I have been making music together since way back when I started rapping. Back in high school when I was first starting out I was just making my own music by myself, but when I heard of a school group about rapping I was interested to see what it was about. To be honest, as a young kid with a wild imagination I imagined a full recording studio with a recording booth and all the equipment needed, but that wasn’t the case. I’m not complaining, I just mention that because it’s funny how kids’ imaginations are. The group was Access Denied, and it was made up of a few different people, mainly Calvin, aka Kalvonix, and his cousins Ohwell and Nizzl. In those days he was called “the rapper of the school” since he loved showing everyone his passion for rapping. I guess at some point he and Mr. Begg, the school English teacher, had come to an agreement to work on a school rap group, and so Access Denied was born. I joined later, but we quickly made a few mixtapes together. We usually recorded right in the classroom, after school hours so no one would be there, and our music was educational and touched on lots of different subjects, without getting too serious about them, but just getting the main message across. Those were fun times for sure, and we even did a show for the Olympics here in Vancouver, and also ended up on the newspaper front cover. “Rapping for a reason” was the title of the newspaper story. They also did an interview with us which was on TV. Of course, all of this wasn’t because we were incredible rappers, it was mostly because it was a school project and we were rapping about positive things. I didn’t mind it at all because I was writing and rapping, which is what I loved doing, but outside of Access Denied I was always working on my own music as well, which wasn’t always the most positive, but it was real to me, since I wasn’t living through the most positive times in my life either. Kalvonix was also doing music on his own, of course, and after he graduated from high school a year before me, we kept meeting up at his house to record song remixes here and there. We eventually had an idea, to release a mixtape together, since we were starting to make more and more songs together. We titled this mixtape “The Come Up.” Back then we weren’t the most professional, we were young and we were really making music kind of in a rush, to be honest. We were having fun though, so we just wanted to move on to the next track and complete it. I spent a lot of nights at Calvin’s house, rapping all through the night up in his room. The good thing is his house was pretty big so I think his parents couldn’t really hear us rapping the night away. Since we were making so much music, we eventually made the Come Up 2, and at some point we decided to turn in into a recurring thing. By the time we recorded The Come Up 3, we had decided that we were getting better and we had to get our music out to more people. That’s when we decided to go around his neighborhood knocking door to door selling CDs of The Come Up 3. I definitely don’t regret it, but the music isn’t really as good as we thought it was in the moment. Over the years we recorded the Come Up 4, 5 and 6, before lots of things in my life changed and I ended up moving away to Honduras, my home country, and eventually meeting my wife Maria, then waiting three years for her residence papers to be approved, and eventually returning here to Canada in February 2020, right before the whole COVID pandemic really started getting crazy. During all of those years we didn’t really make more music together, and maybe we didn’t even think about it. Calvin had success with his own music, always being super active with it and showcasing it to the world, and in my case, I was way into living a spiritual life, to the point that I had decided not to pursue music anymore because I didn’t want fame, because of the possibility of it corrupting me and the beautiful family I had formed with Maria. I remember actually telling Calvin I was quitting music, and he was questioning whether I was sure of my decision. In that moment I was one hundred percent sure. I never wanted fame, but I have always wanted to share my music with people, and to share inspirational messages through it. Fast forward some more time, spirituality-wise my thoughts changed in a way, and I basically decided to start pursuing music as a career again as I grew increasingly frustrated with 9-to-5 life, which I believe is corrupt, soulless and exploitative. I told Calvin I was back into music, so we put together The Come Up 8 and 9, mostly from a few of the last songs we had recorded together, as well as some songs from his albums that I was featured on. As I started getting serious with music again, and Calvin was getting more professional than ever and constantly releasing music on streaming platforms, we decided to make The Come Up 10 an album, with no remixes, just original tracks we could post for streaming. Since life is a lot busier now for both of us, it took us about to years to finally complete this album, but I’m really proud of it, and it’s really symbolic in a way. We’ve come a long way from our early days recording the first Come Up. Our flows have improved a lot, our writing is more impactful and our sound is overall more professional. It’s also been maybe a little over ten years since we started, so the number 10 is kind of symbolic in a way as well. We released The Come Up 10 this year on August 12th, a few days before his Calvin’s birthday. Kalvonix has always been a big inspiration for me, not only because we share the same passion for music and rhyming, but also because he was born with cerebral palsy and faced a lot of struggles growing up, yet he never let that get in the way of his passion and his dream, and nowadays he’s found a decent amount of success, and I’m super happy for him. I’ve always been all over the place, lacking the dedication to make my music thing happen in the way he has, but life is a learning experience, and I can say that now I’m more focused than I’ve ever been, so I’m excited about what the future holds. I’m constantly working on new beats and songs, and Kalvonix and I don’t plan on stopping our work together either, so The Come Up 11 is already in the works. For now though, give The Come Up 10 a listen, I’ve embedded the Spotify link below so you can listen right on here if interested. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to listen, since we put a lot of effort into this album.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 22 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Communication is the key to life. It’s only through proper communication that we can form connections and bonds with others, that we can accurately express ourselves and allow others to express themselves to us. Too often we are so caught up in our own ideas and beliefs, we close ourselves off from listening to others, therefore we can’t grow. These days, we have so many different ways of communicating, we don’t even need to see or hear each other. We have phone calls and text messages so we can communicate instantaneously, so we could say that communication has evolved and become more efficient, but has it really improved overall? Are we really more connected these days than we were back in the day when we didn’t have such devices to ease communication? I don’t really know, so it’s just a question to put out there, an idea. Yes, things like text can have us communicating with each other faster, but emotions that go along with our words can’t be transmitted properly in such a way. Sarcasm might be taken as serious and vice versa. We can type whatever we want these days and face no accountability. Would we say the same things in real life to people’s faces? Friends meet up every once in a while yet they might be constantly checking their phones, communicating with others at the same time. Family members in the same house contact each other through text rather than walking to each other’s rooms. Convenience seems to be the greatest thing we can achieve, but are we keeping track of everything we’re losing as we merge with technology more and more each day? Too often we’re so caught up in the emotions that come along with novelty, we don’t notice what we’ve lost until so much time has passed, until maybe generations later. With every good comes some evil, it’s just the dual nature of this world we live in, so again, I can’t say whether all this convenience is ultimately good or bad. I mean, it’s definitely important to be able to call a doctor when we’re in a medical emergency, to be able to call 911 if we’re in danger, it’s great to be able to keep in touch with our family members and friends who are scattered across the globe. Would we be able to live without these things? How did people deal with life before this? It would be pretty rough for us to return to such a state, so I’m not saying that we need to do away with modern technology, it’s just that everything in life requires balance, and unfortunately, we are becoming unbalanced. We have merged with technology to the point that we can connect with anyone, anywhere, but what about the connection that has been with us all along, the invisible connection between human beings, the light that shines within us all? If we stay inside, if we stay connected to our computers, to the internet, if we stop going out into the world and actually interacting with people, then that light will surely die. Technology is amazing to have, but we don’t need to be using it 24/7. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are just super comfortable with technology, more so than they are with people. The possibilities of what we can do with technology seem endless, and it’s easy to distract ourselves with it. Communication is key in every aspect of life, in relationships, in business, in showing the world who we truly are and finding the experiences that were meant for us. We don’t know how much we’re missing out on because we fail to properly communicate our deepest desires, our fears and our dreams. We are afraid to be vulnerable, and understandably so, but closing ourselves off from others is not the answer either. Technology allows us to hide behind a screen, whether it’s a phone or TV or a computer, we are either consuming some fantasy reality, or we are creating a new reality, maybe a video or a song, or writing a story or a blog post such as this. Yes, I’m trying to get a message across, I’m communicating with whoever will read this, but are we likely to ever meet each other? Would we even want to? It’s easy to agree with the ideas of strangers on the internet, or to argue against their ideas, but in life it can often be very different. As we get to know other people more, without even realizing it we begin projecting images onto them, images than can distort the meaning of what we’re trying to get across. This is why communicating on the internet is easier, or at least more comfortable. I truly believe that we as a species are losing our abilities of communicating properly, since these days, a lot of people can’t handle any sort of confrontation, even peaceful debate, and if anyone even brings up an idea of something that sounds like it might go against their own ideas, even if it’s just brought up as a subject of debate and not explicitly confirmed, they quickly start working to silence that person, to cancel them even. How can communication not degrade between human beings if we can’t even express ourselves without fear of being silenced? We really need to reflect on this, and we need to be more open to people’s ideas without fear. Lies will always be exposed in the end, and the truth will eventually triumph, so we don’t need to try to defend it by silencing others. If you are that afraid of someone else’s ideas then maybe there’s something you’re trying to hold on to without really thinking critically about. So many people find comfort in their ideas and beliefs, so having them challenged leads to an existential crisis, wondering who they even are. They have turned their beliefs into their identity, so they cease to even act as rational, free-thinking human beings, becoming defenders of ideas, ready to attack real breathing, living, thinking, feeling people in order to defend their ideas.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 21 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

It’s a shame to see people dumbing themselves down because they are not confident in themselves. Whenever we allow insecurities to stop us from moving forward with life we are robbing ourselves of the precious gift which was granted to us since birth, to feel the magic of being unique, of being an essential and integral part of the whole of life. No one is bigger or smaller in the plan of life, since we are all emanated Light from the oneness of the universe, we are all direct descendants of God, created in the Divine image. Whenever we give up on our dearest dreams due to doubt and fear, whenever we compromise our values in order to please ungrateful people, whenever we choose to do nothing and waste our potential rather than to face some adversity, some ridicule and jealousy, what we are doing is refusing the wonderful blessings which are inherently ours. We must all be grateful for advice from our elders, from parents and wise teachers, from gurus or well-meaning friends and relatives, but we must also use discrimination in every situation in order to discern what, out of the message which has been imparted to us by whoever it may be, actually serves us and what will hinder us if we apply it into our lives. That is what we must preserve, and the rest we can dispose of for the moment after minor analyzation. See, we all think we know what is best for each other. What we often don’t see is that there may be many factors which influence our opinion on what is best for everyone. What one individual believes he has realized without a doubt from direct experience of his own life, by dissecting the events of his life and interpreting the minutest detail, can be the complete opposite idea of another individual’s entire philosophy of life. Both believe that their belief is justified because of what they have been through, both are convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that they are correct in their analysis of life. But both are taking into account only limited data. A person who is much older may have more experience living life than someone who is younger, but do they have more experience being young in the present era? Being young now is not the same as being young was one hundred years ago, or even fifty or twenty years ago. Parents believe they always know what is best for their children, and most times they do (when it comes to certain things), but it is not always the case. Even if a parent is conscious of the fact that life consists of both pain and pleasure, and that their child might become a better person if they suffered through some pain of their own, they will still do anything in their power not to allow their child to experience pain. Such parents believe they are doing the right thing by not allowing their children to live through the conditions they lived through. However, balance is the key to everything in life. A child who grows up completely sheltered from society, locked in his home, and brought up by parents who directly or indirectly instill in him the notion that everyone is untrustworthy is bound to grow up to believe that everyone is a threat that should be treated with suspicion, that everyone is untrustworthy and that the world is a hostile place that is best avoided. Even if this hateful concept of trusting no one is not embedded in the child, he may still be forever shy and terrified of expressing his opinions in a social setting even if he wishes to do so. A sheltered lifestyle has rendered the child socially awkward, a problem that could be solved but is instead worsened since his anxiety levels just keep on rising with every interaction. Insecurities are prison bars to keep us locked in our minds. They are often deliberately placed in our minds by abusive people and by media programming. Girls who are of perfectly good size are made to feel like twigs when they look at magazine models, normal adolescents are made to feel powerless and petty when they watch rap music videos glamorizing promiscuous sex, dangerous drugs and flaunting material possessions like cars, liquor bottles and dollar bills. It is a socially acceptable stereotype that women need to spend hours on makeup every morning before they are free to go anywhere. Is anyone locking them inside so that they can’t go out and interact in the world? Yes, of course, they are prevented from escaping by the prison bars of insecurity in their mind. Some hate themselves and are unable to forgive or let go of a distant past, and so they drown their insecurities in alcohol or heavy doses of hard drugs. A beginning alcoholic has just figured out that he needs to get wasted at every party in order to even talk to people. Having no greater goal in life, he feels satisfied and thus, a life of addiction begins. If he ever puts the bottle down many years later he will come to realize that he has wasted many years of his life, as well as much of his health and money, on petty pleasures with people who don’t actually give a damn. He might notice that some are now dead from an overdose or collision, some are in jail, and some are still living the party lifestyle as if everything was fine, aging, refusing commitment to anything worthwhile, wasting away their potential to thrive, to do something more than just surviving and wasting space. Insecurity is the root of all this. We waste our lives away because of insecurity. We would rather live mediocre lives of transient thrills, than to face the hard knocks of life, to face rejection and ridicule, with the faith that one day we will finally taste sweet victory. Don’t let the world bring you down, learn from your life and those of others, but don’t let all of the information that’s out there overwhelm you and prevent you from trusting yourself and offering the world whatever you have been blessed with.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 20 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Life. I feel like whenever I sit down and start to write, whenever I want to get something important written down, not anything specific but just something important and deep, the word “life” always pops into my mind first. I guess it’s because I’m always contemplating life in general, and it’s cool but scary how all aspects of life connect, they’re all intertwined to form one never-ending thing. Life is that one thing, and not only are all of my thoughts and actions interwoven to make up my life, they’re also interconnected with all of your thoughts and actions, as well as everyone else’s, to make up life in general. Ideas come from many sources, and if many people have the same idea or come to the same conclusion about the same thing, then a set of beliefs is usually agreed upon in order to make up a system of thought, whether it’s a philosophy of life, a religion, or a political party. These ideas, along with the feeling of being part of a community, drive these people to act in certain ways, which affect everyone around them, for better or for worse. Think about how the world has been drastically changed because of the ideas even of one person. There’s so much more to everything than meets the eye, simply because we can’t even begin to imagine the effects of all of our actions and thoughts. Every big project or movement has been born from a single idea in the mind of one person, but how likely is it that they knew this thought would lead to such a big thing? They were just having a thought, just like we do every second of the day. Too often we let negativity get the best of us, and we wallow in self-pity, not realizing that these thoughts are opening doors for more negativity to enter our life. We underestimate the power of thoughts because we don’t consider them real in the same way that we do objects. In reality, I always like to say that the realest of things are those which are invisible. Is love visible? Loyalty? Respect? Trust? Joy? These things are invisible, but they are real as can be. The same goes for the air we breathe, without which we couldn’t even live. So, these are some of the invisible things we are aware of atleast. Does that mean that they’re the only invisible things that impact our lives? How do we know that our energy isn’t transmitted to other people around us? How do we know that our thoughts don’t affect our bodies? These are all just random ideas, but it’s still within the scope of what I started writing about, since I simply started writing about life. All of this is life, everything we can think of is life. When something bad happens, we say “Oh well, that’s life.” We recognize that life is a mix of good and bad, and that these things balance each other out. So is life ultimately good or bad? Life is just life, and we make of it what we want. We all have the power to influence the world, and it all starts from within, by working on ourselves. We underestimate how much good can come from just getting our own minds in order, from learning how to let go of attachments to things that no longer serve us, to negative patterns of thinking and behaving. It all starts in the mind; as within, so without. Although I write this and recognize it as truth, I know it’s easier said than done. Life is complicated, and human beings are just as complex as life itself. We all have our own life experiences, our own thoughts, our own likes and dislikes, our own genetic makeup which influences our minds and bodies. We are all unique, and I think this mirrors life itself in a way. There’s so many different things in life, and this shows us how many possibilities are available to us. We should never give up on life, or on ourselves, because we have infinite potential, and the more we realize and believe that the more we can tap into it. I don’t claim to have all the answers to life. In fact, life for me is at times difficult to make sense of, and it seems cold and cruel. I’ve struggled to fight these thoughts for a while, but I know I have to fight them, because I know that the cruelty is not life’s fault. It is the world we have created, a world centered on material wealth, which is contributing to our hearts growing cold. This is not evidence that life itself is cold or evil though, neither does it show that humans are like that. It’s a shame that so many of us focus all of our energy on material wealth, on money and status, when we could make really important changes in the world if we only focused on things that really matter. We have created a society where it’s easy to fall behind if we are not constantly grinding, and even though we might start off just working to pay the bills, soon we find that we have no time for anything else, and since our life barely has any meaning outside of working and saving money, thinking about and spending money, well, we might as well make as much of it as we can, isn’t that right? Maybe we’ll have enough by the time we’re old and have barely any time left to really love. Maybe even then we won’t have enough. How much is enough? Think about that. Don’t fall into the trap, think for yourself, look within yourself for the best of what you are, and find a way to manifest that into reality. Can a single person change the world? Well, if nobody believes so, then nobody will try, so the world will not change. If I try to change myself then I can inspire others, and maybe there’s someone out there who’s on the same vibe, inspiring others to strive towards higher goals than money. Maybe the people I inspire could some day encounter the people you inspire, and maybe they’ll inspire countless more. Everything works in this way, and there are people who realize their infinite potential, yet they choose to use it for evil and for their own material gain. If we stop working for the good of the world by refusing to work on ourselves, we can be sure that evil will not stop working for its destruction.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 19 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

I’m sort of rushing this because I have a half an hour left until midnight. I know I can make it happen though, so here I am. I’m also rendering the YouTube video for my daily beat, as well as setting up my new Arturia Keylab 61 to work with FL Studio. I basically got carried away and left everything for the last minute, since I was having so much fun just playing on my keyboard. It’s funny because it’s supposed to be the main thing producers work with, yet for so many years I was just making beats by simply clicking notes into FL’s piano roll. Anyway, since I just got it I’ve been having fun setting it up to go with my workflow, seeing how I can integrate it with FL Studio as well as my MPC. I guess I was just having so much fun that I didn’t really feel the time going by. Time really flies, and if things aren’t organized properly it can easily slip away from us. If we really want to have goals and set deadlines for ourselves we should focus on that first and then do other things we want to do. It can be tempting, for sure, to do what we really want to do in the moment, but over time we’ll probably regret not doing the goals we had set for ourselves, so we might as well do them. I guess what I’m trying to say is that long-term satisfaction is worth more than satisfaction in the moment. If we have a clear goal that we know we want to keep going then we should stick to that, rather than assuming that we’ll have time to do it later. I was just so excited finding the right set up for my gear that I decided to leave my goals until the end. Now I’m literally racing against time to write down enough words. Yeah, yeah, I know, it’s not a life or death matter, but you all know just how shitty it feels when you’ve been succeeding at a goal consistently for quite a while, only to fuck it all up really quick and have to start all over again. It can get exhausting. So again, the wise decision is to take care of our long-term goals first. Amazing things require consistency in order to be carried out. Without consistency, everything falls apart before it can even come to life. This is why we must use our time wisely, we need to plan things according to importance, because if we develop a habit of procrastinating it can be extremely hard to break. Not to make excuses but I’ve also had a weird sensation in my chest since the morning, and I’m a bit worried since anxiety always makes me question every small sensation in my body, so for a while in the morning I was doing all sorts of things in order to feel better, so I wasn’t really in the most productive state of mind. Either way it doesn’t matter, because I did have a some extra time I could have used to work on my goals. Goals can only be reached with discipline, the discipline needed to put in the necessary time and effort into our work. Once you have a discipline going then it is easier to follow the road that’ll get you where you want to go. A lot of times we look for excuses because it’s easies to justify ourselves than it is to own up to the fact that we should be getting more serious about our goals, our dreams. I know we all live very different lives, and we all have different things that make us happy as well as things we suffer from. I remember being a kid, it felt good to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, living life in the exact way I wanted to without regrets. Everything changed when I grew up a bit more though, because I started to realize that life is an interconnected web, and that there’s a lot more to it than just fulfilling our own desires. There’s things that require our attention, we need to constantly work on ourselves as well as on our relationships. With everything we have to focus on as adults, it can be extremely difficult to find the time, consistently, to set goals and to make them happen without failing. I admit, sometimes I’m overwhelmed by how little time there is to do so much. Then I remember that time is just a construct, and that I don’t need to stress out about everything in life. I just have to prioritize, to do whatever’s most important first, then move on to something else, and so on. What gets done is the most important, and if there’s no time to do everything, then maybe those things that were left out weren’t meant to be done just yet. If we do something while thinking about the next thing we have to do, then we’re less likely to do whatever we’re doing well, because our focus is split between two activities, between the present and the future. We might already be planning in our heads just how we’ll execute that next task, visualizing it and perhaps getting excited about it. Excitement is good when it comes to our goals and projects, but we should be aware of too much excitement as well. Sometimes what is needed in order for us to make dreams happen is for us to balance them out with a bit of reality. Rather than working with the fruits of labor in mind, it would be wiser to just do what we’re doing as best as we can, and to later do the same thing when we do the next thing on our list. It’s good to dream and to be optimistic about the future, but be alert! Always be aware of everything you can do to make sure you succeed, and make sure to be actively working on these things so that you have the highest chance possible of making your dreams come true.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 18 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

The whole of life is evidently all energy; hence we are all emanations of this energy. We have fair basis to believe that we are not separate from anything, as the whole of matter is energy as well. Energy is effort, a never-ending effort to elevate, the driver of all evolution. Energy is the source of time and space in this reality, but sadly time is often misused due to it being disregarded as if it’s no big deal. We love to say that time is an illusion and it’s all in the mind, that the clocks were all created by men, and that we live life on our own schedule. Although I agree wholeheartedly, and I acknowledge our innate desire and need to be free and to never feel bound by time, what good does it really do me to realize this if it still won’t set me free from my chains? What good comes from being aware of being a slave if I am, in the end, still a slave to schedules, to the chains of captivity, if I can’t escape my worst afflictions no matter what? Isn’t the person who realizes the problem, yet does nothing to stop it, ultimately in a worse position than the one who was never aware of the problem in the first place? Merely realizing that time is an illusion doesn’t free us from it if we can’t apply what we’ve learned to our real lives. As we go on living, we are all blessed with an endless amount of energy which we can use as we please. Everything we think and do becomes the cause to an effect, and it itself was an effect of a previous cause. This energy has existed for eternity and shall keep on existing, yet it manifests itself in this moment in time and space in your birth or mine, our lives themselves probably being effects of previous causes unknown to us. We must take a moment to see that for as long as we live in this physical world we will be bound by time and space, experiencing life in a seemingly linear fashion, and whether or not it is an illusion in the grand scheme of things matters little to the clock and to our day to day responsibilities, all of which revolve around seconds, minutes, and hours. So, what can we do to be truly free? It is not an option for us to bury our heads in the sand, and we cannot lie in bed all day enjoying the soft touch of blissful ignorance either. We need to use our time wisely, by reflecting on the seemingly random events which are taking place in our lives and in the world as a whole. Everything is simply saturated with meaning, but the question now is how to perceive it. We can begin to perceive all the significance in our lives by training our mind so that we can have it only focus on what matters. A distracted mind is easily led astray from its real goal by forces that wish to prevent it from reaching it. When we learn to pay attention to the things that really matter to us is when we start to free ourselves. We can now use our time wisely in order to progress in our goals instead of wasting it on meaningless fun. Not that there’s anything wrong with fun. The key word in the previous sentence is ‘meaningless’. We can all have fun with meaning, we can all enjoy life. After all we are all powered, so to speak, from the same source, the same source of all that has meaning. The energy which maintains our bodies, our minds, is the same energy that gives life to the plants and to the animals. Energy is transmitted back and forth by all living beings through action, through thought, through speech, through feeling. We forget that things do not have to be visible in order to be real. We forget that we can smell and that we can hear, yet that neither the odors we smell or the sounds we hear are visible to us. We forget that we can feel the air, and in fact rely on it, yet we can’t see it. We forget that, although we feel the light hitting our skin on a bright sunny day at the beach, we can’t see the rays extending down from the sun and hitting us. In much the same way, we emit subtle vibrations everywhere we go, and even when we don’t go anywhere. Every thought is a thing, and every feeling is a thing too, but the problem is that too often our thoughts and feelings seem to manifest on their own, without being called upon by us. That’s because, in fact, they weren’t called upon by us, but by the learned habits and preconceptions of the mind. Evil thoughts arise in a person’s mind, apparently out of the blue, because he or she has allowed it to consume too much garbage, too much negativity, and now it is seeing the world based on rotten thoughts, it is creating its own thoughts based on what it misinterprets. Sadly, thoughts which are completely perverse are sometimes seen as flashes of intuition, just as sometimes someone might attack or kill someone else and later claim that God told them to do so. People who experience such strong feelings often believe they are being called upon by their intuition, but they don’t realize what it really going on. Instinct is something different from intuition. Intuition arises from the divine wisdom which we know to be correct even beyond our desires and ambitions. Instinct arises from something we have consciously or subconsciously learned over time which has become deeply embedded in our mind. Something happens which reminds us of an old incident and we react in the same automatic way. This is a learned reaction, a habit. This is instinct, repetition, mindless action. Mindless action is also energy, but it is energy which has no purpose, no value. In order for this energy to become valuable to its beholder, he or she must learn how to control this energy. This person must learn to control what they pay attention to consciously as well as subconsciously or unconsciously in dreams. This person must learn not to fall prey to selfish desires or passions, they should not do anything which will harm others in any way, they must live with integrity. This will strengthen character, and it is a daily practice of divine intuition, the spark of God that dwells within us all. This is the conscious part of who we are, and the more we practice connecting with it, the more conscious we will be at all times. We will become aware of our passing thoughts, of our moods, of our reactions to petty situations as well as disasters. This sort of introspection will allow us to modify our reactions, to create new habits and to drop old ones, to spend time more wisely. In other words, connecting with this higher state within ourselves, the state of our true being and consciousness, allows us to control where our attention goes. Just as in meditation, focus is placed on the lack of sensory input and thought, but most importantly on consciousness, on awareness, on the energy of being simply being alive. The most important point to remember is that awareness of sensory input is not sensory input, and being conscious of thought doesn’t mean that one is thinking. Whether one is being conscious of breath or of thought or of sensory input, none of them require any action on our part. Breathing and thinking are automatic processes, and sensory input is external, coming from outside ourselves. So, as we relinquish control and we stop trying to think or to feel or to do anything, we come to a state of simply being, the state which is truly us, and which is constantly aware that we are thinking, feeling, doing what’s right, doing what’s wrong. It is often ignored, and when we ignore this consciousness within ourselves, we become unconscious to everything, and we engage in simple mindless action, purposeless action. This leads to people being unable to get along with each other because there is no value of energy, energy is wasted, as if we were to live forever on this physical plane. The obvious result of this waste is that, as we all remain unconscious of our waste of energy and time, and of our feelings and emotions and how they affect us collectively as a species and as a planet, the world gradually sinks into separation, into division, and therefore into further and further devastation and destruction, the product of all the evil energy circulating in our atmosphere.

much love

~ rebel eye