Tag: blogging

DAY 36 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

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Some days I feel like I can’t find the right inspiration to write from, like I can’t find any solid ground to stand on to make any sort of concrete point. All I really have are my own often contradictory ideas and opinions, which are colored by my own life experiences, my own confusions and my own beliefs, which I wouldn’t want to think are beliefs but I have to be honest about and admit they are. I think beliefs can be really limiting, because once we believe something religiously it becomes easy to shut ourselves off from any other ideas that might contradict our own. On the other hand, it seems like it would be really difficult to live life without any beliefs at all. Obviously there are things we can all tell are or are not a certain way, and it would be absurd not to believe the facts of life just for the sake of being open to new ideas. We all go through life believing certain things, and disbelieving other things, whether we know it or not. Belief gives structure to our lives. I used to think that I wanted to learn about everything, I imagined myself finding mystical truths of the universe while deep into mystical experiences, either induced by heavy meditation or by psychedelics. I even visited a Float Tank downtown a few times, always searching for some trippy meaning to life, as I mentioned yesterday. These days though, it doesn’t seem as fun as I’d expected. The more I spend time thinking about life and the world in its current condition, the more I realize how backwards everything is, how divided everyone is, and how it’s all going according to the plan of higher powers who wish to control us. The worst part of it all is that I often can’t say anything, and this is why I rarely write about this sort of thing, even though I always think I should more often, because I know that I’m part of the problem. I’m contributing to the destruction of our planet just as much as everyone else, because even though I see the problem, and I’m sure many others do as well, I don’t really do much to go against it. Why? I don’t want to make excuses but it really doesn’t seem like there’s much one can do. We’re all dependent on the same things, I need my internet, my music equipment to record and release music, my computer to write on my blog, social media to share my ideas, the customers who call me at work need technical support with their cable issues, some older people crying and obsessing over their TV’s because they have no other company and nothing else to do. Materialism is the religion of the modern world, and we can’t dare say anything about it because we wouldn’t be able to turn back even if we wanted to. It’s sad how disconnected everything and everyone is, and I really think it’s all deliberate. Things get more expensive but people don’t make more money, people can’t keep up, families don’t work because there’s no time to be together, kids go out on their own and end up on drugs due to lack of guidance or simply because they’re following trends and idolizing artists who glorify living like junkies and justify it just because they’re rich. Why is it that kind of music that ends up popular? Probably for the same reason we see alcohol and cigarettes in movies, everything is a business and everything is advertising. The media is also owned and it’s crazy to think that whatever narrative the people with money and power want to promote can be promoted with no problem. People vote but in reality everything is probably manipulated in order to keep people divided and fighting rather than waking up to realize it’s all just a show they’re putting on. So why am I saying all this? Simply because it just came to my mind, just like it often does. I kind of wish I could still feel like I did back in the day, when I didn’t really care about anything other than partying and being reckless and getting high and trying to hook up with girls. At least back then I could have fun, and I don’t recall feeling much anxiety. In a way, although I hate it, I’m kind of thankful for my anxiety now, because it really keeps me from doing a bunch of dumb shit that I know I shouldn’t be doing. I know I wouldn’t really enjoy living how I did back then if I was living it right now, but I guess I just wish things didn’t seem so hopeless. I used to think of the world as a magical place to explore, like some sort of adventure from a movie or a Zelda game, an open world with challenges to beat. It’s hard to hear like that when all you hear about is problems all around the world, knowing I’m already in one of the best places to live makes me even wonder what the point of travelling would even be now, even back to my home country of Honduras which is super dangerous. I feel like I don’t want any problems or even possibility for problems now, I just want guaranteed peace, peace of mind. Well, as I said at the beginning of this post, I have nothing to offer other than my ideas, even when they’re not too positive or optimistic at times. This is just a day in my life, a stage I pass through as I continue living and learning, and if life really is positive deep down, and good, then I’m sure I’ll eventually experience that, because I know it deep within, I know that life and the world are good, even if we haven’t created the best civilization on it, it is our fault, not the world’s, so I’m sure there’s still hope for recovery, so I’ll see where life takes me.

much love

~ rebel eye

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DAY 35 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Yesterday I wrote about my fascination with learning about spiritual ideas from different religions and trying to learn if there’s any common origin between them. Today I think I’ll write about another fascination of mine, which might not be as intense anymore, but is still a part of my life, and was definitely a huge deal for me when I was a bit younger. It might not be the healthiest thing to be obsessed with, but I gotta tell the truth. If you’ve read some of my earlier posts in this series of a thousand daily words then you might be aware of how I’m just recently starting to cut down on weed after about 15 years of daily use. These days that’s a big deal for me because weed has always been something which I thought I’d never really need to cut down on, but what you might not know is that weed is far from the only drug I’ve used throughout my life. In fact, my unhealthy fascination I mentioned at the beginning of this post is drugs. Yes, drugs in general have always been extremely interesting to me, and I feel like that is very intimately tied with my love for spirituality, philosophy and all things weird. I’ve always loved learning and researching (about things that actually interest me), and I knew that drugs were dangerous, so even though I was in the eight grade and still very young, I knew that I had a lot of research to do if I was going to embark on this path of experimenting with psychoactive substances, but I was determined to do it so I learned as much as I could. Weed was my first high, and at first I hadn’t decided to make it an everyday habit, but I was completely interested and started learning about it’s effects and even history. Since I had no tolerance at all, weed was super psychedelic for me, something that has never been the same after years of heavy use. I liked how it made me more aware of my thoughts, how everything i thought seemed interesting and meaningful, and as I started learning online about other drugs I naturally gravitated towards substances that offered the same kind of trippy, introspective effects, more specifically psychedelics. I became fascinated with mushrooms and LSD, and I don’t remember whether my interest in psychedelics or my interest in hippie culture came first, or if they both sort of grew together and eventually inspired me to try to live a spiritual or philosophical life. I’ve always thought of the world as extremely unjust as well, and I guess it was the whole anti-establishment thing which made me really like hippies, as well as their use of psychedelic drugs as some sort of sacrament to look within themselves and see what they could find. That life seemed a lot more meaningful to me than working for money my entire life, chasing more power and status. So I started reading countless trip reports on Erwoid, from first trips to heroic doses, to all sorts of combinations, so I was learning about more substances as I learned about mushrooms and acid. The trips were so insane, the visions people spoke of and the feelings they described were so interesting to me, and so I started asking people if they knew anyone with shrooms or acid I could buy. I didn’t have much luck at school at first, but I eventually met this kid, I don’t really remember how, who sold me some acid. I mean, he was a nerdy looking kid from my school, but I don’t remember how I knew to ask him or how our meeting came about. Anyway, I had some crazy acid trips, and from then on I decided to try all psychedelics. Although a lot of it was curiosity, I know that deep down I was never using these substances for the sake of “having fun.” I’ve always had a huge desire to search for truth, to find some truth that will help me live life in the most meaningful way possible, and I was always looking to have mystical experiences that I could learn from, maybe learn something that could change my life, and I can’t say that I didn’t find exactly that. I really think that tripping so many times since a very young age has a lot to do with who I am today and who I grew to be. When I started getting into drugs and drinking, outwardly I was trying to fit in. I was rapping about nothing, about being cool or whatever else I thought would impress people, trying to rock fake designer clothes and smoking cigarettes just to look cool, looking for fights. I don’t want to blame hip-hop because ultimately I was the one who was trying to copy a culture, and a pretty toxic one at that, but it’s obvious that the way I dressed and the way I acted in those days was was inspired by hip-hop. Who didn’t want to have nice cars and clothes and to have any girl you wanted? Tripping made me see the deeper meaning of life though, and eventually I stopped writing those types of raps because I started to see it as an art form, as poetry, in the way that even 2Pac saw it. I also stopped trying to rock designer clothes because I started to loathe materialism and completely rejected being someone who is constantly trying to impress others with meaningless things such as the amount of money or luxury items I have. Tripping hard really let me see that life is way to deep not to take responsibility for my life, to waste it on meaningless things. I started reading a lot of philosophical and spiritual books, such as Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception” where he talks about the similarities between reported visions of psychedelic experienced and the art and mythology of ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, and this inspired me to learn even more. I’m at the end of this post and I really only got to touch on my relationship with psychedelics, which is one of my more positive experiences with drugs. Other drugs, like alcohol, I haven’t had the easiest relationship with, but that’s a topic for another day.

much love

~ rebel eye

DAY 34 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

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One of the biggest fascinations of my life has been with the root of spiritual truth. I always wonder where the great spiritual traditions stemmed from, because they all seem to share a lot of similarities yet they seem very difficult to reconcile if we get into the fine details. Jesus said “I and the Father are One,” and this is the main idea in Hinduism, that we are all one with the Godhead, and that God is always creating, manifesting everything that we see in the world. A quote by Meister Eckhart expresses this same sentiment: “The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.” Swami Vivekananda, who was one of the most important Hindu monks when it comes to bringing Hinduism to the USA and to North America in general. He said that when he started his journey as a monk the two books he had with him were the Bhagavad Gita and The Imitation of Christ. It makes sense that he would take the Gita with him since it’s a Hindu holy book, but why The Imitation of Christ? It’s because Vivekananda could see the same truth in Jesus’ words and life as he knew from his own life as a Hindu monk. That reminds me of another great quote by Meister Eckhart, “Theologians may quarrel but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” It seems to me that this is correct. If you study the mystical or esoteric side of most religions, there are a lot of concepts which are the same, and it makes me think that these are universal truths that will always remain true until the end of time, and which have been known since the beginning of time and passed down through the ages. One thing which always seems strange to me is how the Old and New Testament are considered two parts of the same book which make up a whole, but there are so many differences between the commandments of the Old Testament and what Jesus stood for and lived by. For example, in the Old Testament Jehovah orders Moses to stone people for all kinds of things, then Jesus comes up to a group of people who are about to stone an adulterous woman and tells them that only he who is free of sin should throw the first stone, obviously meaning that no stone should be thrown since we are all sinners. In another story Jesus tells some people that they should heal the sick even though it was the Sabbath, which I take to mean that people’s lives are more important than following some rule. So why are there these contradictions? Why is Jesus the second coming of the same God of the Old Testament? In a way it makes much more sense that he was a spiritual man who saw the evils of the society he lived in and decided to stand up for what he felt to be correct, things I’m pretty sure most of us would agree with him on, like how ridiculous it is to stone a person even because of something like adultery. Jesus was a rebel in my eyes, and if he was a man then that’s a huge inspiration for us to aspire to live in such a way. if he was God, on the other hand, the same God of the Hebrews from long ago, then why was he so different? There are many thoughts about the God of the Old Testament, the Gnositcs even went as far as to refer to it as the demiurge. Now, I haven’t gotten too deep into Gnosticism, so I have no opinion on that matter as of yet, but I know that things may not be as clear as Christianity makes them out to be. if Jesus was really a mystical man, a spiritual and philosophical person, then maybe the concepts he was learning and teaching about were those of the Kabbalah, which is the mystical tradition of Judaism. The crazy thing about the Kabbalah is that it refers to things such as reincarnation, which makes it more similar to Hinduism in that regard than to Christianity. The Kabbalistic concept of the big bang, or the tzim-tzum as they call it, is that of bread of shame. This concept basically means that, at the beginning of creation, all souls were one, and they all received constant energy from the Godhead, but somehow these souls, since they were all part of the Godhead and filled with its energy, became conscious enough to want to transmit energy themselves, rather than just receive. It’s as if you got something for free and so you feel shame about it, because you couldn’t get it on your own. God, or the supreme consciousness that was at the beginning of time, granted the wish and put all these souls into bodies, creating this physical world, a world where we could exercise our free will to give, not only to receive. The problem that arose was that, the souls felt that something was missing, since they were not fully receiving the divine energy which they were receiving at one point, and this created unlimited desires. Now we desire everything, and we desire things non-stop, and we are doomed to always feel desires we can never fully satisfy, until we finally come to understand that all of these desires are just masking the true desire within, the true desire of all humanity, which is to reconnect with the Godhead, to feel that completely satisfying energy once again. The Kabbalah has a concept of emanations, meaning that the divine energy is filtered many times before arriving at our world. I’m not an expert so I can’t go into the specifics of it, but the main idea is that there are many realms of reality, each more material then the next, and every dimension mirrors, in a way, the dimension above it. Things in the higher planes make things happen in the lower planes, and vice-versa. This seems very similar to the Hermetic concept of “As above, so below.” Hermeticism is another very deep science, and it is said that it comes from Ancient Egypt. Isn’t it strange that there is a very close connection between the Ancient Hebrews and the Ancient Egyptians? I wonder how exactly the wisdom of the Kabbalah and the wisdom of Hermeticism are interconnected. I wanted this to be a post about the main spiritual ideas and how they all seem to connect, in my eyes, but I see I’ve gotten to the thousand words and have only rambled randomly! I can’t help it though because these ideas bring up crazy trains of thought in my mind, and everything seems to connect in some form or another. At times I feel what Buddha meant when he said that he would rather focus on the practical aspects of spirituality rather than wondering about God or Gods. Anyway, I just have to keep learning, and I’ll probably continue these ideas in some future posts. Blessings to you all.

much love

~ rebel eye

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DAY 33 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

Although I’m not even close to passing my previous record of 81 days straight of writing a thousand words for my blog, I’m actually thinking of cutting it down to 500 words a day. Now, you might be thinking that I’m starting to get lazy or running out of things to write about, but that’s not it. Today I was listening to some of my old music from back in 2012, and I realized that I really need to keep writing raps, constantly, if I want to keep improving and if I don’t want to lose the skill. I finally learned proper recording techniques, I finally picked up an audio interface this year and an XLR mic and I barely record any music at all, since I barely write any new music these days. I guess I just feel like whatever I write has to be really inspirational and poetic, which is kind of holding me back, whereas back in the day I feel like I could write songs in a flash. I’d like to say that it was because I didn’t focus so much on trying to say the right things, but a lot of the lyrics from my old songs are actually pretty good, so maybe it just might be that I’m falling off after not writing consistently for so long. I have a bunch of old rhyme books, some of those lyrics are recorded already and some never got recorded, others will never be recorded. Although I have all these old rhyme books though, I feel like I need to write something new and fresh, and this is what I’m thinking of doing: Instead of writing 1000 daily words for my blog, I’m gonna write 500 words, and I’ll write a full 16-bar verse every day, that way I’ll never run out of music to record and I’ll keep improving my lyric writing skills, not to mention my rapping itself since I’ll be practicing a lot more now that I’ll have lyrics to work with. This will probably also keep me from overthinking my writing, as I’ve been doing lately, since I’ll have to write a daily verse. I think it should be a cool exercise. I’d love to do that but there’s just no time, between making and trying to sell beats, between trying to learn guitar daily, to exercise for a half an hour, as well as writing on my blog and hanging out with my wife, not to mention working, there’s just no time to do both. I could complain for hours about how there’s not enough time to do what we really want to do in our current fast-paced way of life, but I know you don’t wanna hear that and I’ll probably just come across as whiny, so instead I’m just gonna cut the complaining right from the start and split my time across everything I love, strategically. So that’s the basic explanation for why I’m planning to start writing 500 words a day instead of a thousand. Today I’m writing a thousand words though, since I didn’t write a verse today, I barely just thought of the idea. While I’m writing about writing I thought I’d mention something else I’m really excited about, which is the fact that my wife Maria and I have been working on a novel together for about two or three years now. It’s about a couple who meets and falls in love and have some crazy adventures together. Basically the idea came up one day when we were out at the park on a sunny day smoking a joint and she started telling me the idea for the story, about a couple who meets and falls in love and travels the world, kind of based on us and what we would like out of life. I said that sounded cool, and we started chatting about ideas of things they could do on their adventures. I’ve always been inspired by novels that convey philosophical messages to the reader, or that simply provoke philosophical though through the scenarios in the story. Some books like this that have inspired me greatly are Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and “Island.” I thought Maria wouldn’t mind if we threw some philosophical subjects into the mix, along with trippy things like psychedelic-like mind altering substances, maybe meeting some strange monks up on the mountains, and even time travel. Since we had our iPad with us we just started recording, and since then every once in a while whenever we went to the park to blaze we would always record our ideas for the novel, each time making it more intricate, creating connections between the characters and scenarios. Once we had a lot of recordings, about a hundred of them, I started transcribing them into a Word document. Not only transcribing but translating as well, since our conversations were half in English, half in Spanish. The novel touches upon a lot of important issues that I feel are relevant to life in our day and age, and I’m really excited to eventually publish it. Recently I finished transcribing all of the recorded voice notes into the Word document, so the next step is to actually write the conversations, write the detailed descriptions of the places and scenarios that will take place. Right now we basically just have the words we spoke for the voice notes, now it’s time for me to take all of that and write the story out of it, so we’re nowhere near done with it, but it’s definitely in the works. I think I’m close to today’s thousand words so I’ll just wish all of you amazing people out there a great night, I appreciate every single person reading this, since that’s basically my whole point in writing this, getting my ideas out into the world and to other people so they won’t make my mind eventually explode! Blessings to you and yours. Until tomorrow and keep being awesome and pursuing your dreams!

much love

~ rebel eye

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DAY 32 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

We are who we are. Just like the world and its inhabitants are all so different, just as there are so many different viewpoints, ideas and beliefs, cultures and traditions, which make up the world we live in, there are also many elements which make us who we are. Each person is a world within his or her self, with many different sides, some of which they may never show the world. We are a product of our environment, yes, of the way we were raised, of all the people we have known and interacted with throughout our lives. Every second changes us, every idea is taken into our consciousness but it is also imprinted into our subconscious mind in some form or another. We are also who we are because of our genes, and maybe we all behave in certain ways because of our shared collective past as part of mankind. Maybe we might even carry something over from some past incarnations, if reincarnation is indeed real. We are all aware of the complexities of the human mind, we recognize this within ourselves, yet it seems like we often forget this when it comes to other people. We see only what we are shown, or only what we want to see, but we forget that usually there is much more than meets the eye. We are born, we live to the best of our abilities, and for what? Some of us are afraid of trying to find out, while others spend their entire lives trying to find that ultimate meaning. We often take pride in being part of a specific group, but we don’t realize that one group is not big enough to fully describe what all of its members really are, only a small part of that. We become entangled in ideologies and make ourselves believe things beyond any doubt, when we really should be humble and understand that we can’t even fully know ourselves. Even with an entire long lifetime, there will probably be things about ourselves which we’ll only understand when we reach a certain age, as well as things which we’ll never fully understand. Life is too complex to make sense of, to apply one ideology to it and to base all of our decisions only on that. We are also extremely complex, and we are impossible to fit into one box, one label. We might feel some way about something now, but as we learn or as we experience more of life, we might come to a different understanding, and this is why we should always be humble and open to learn. Belief might provide us with comfort, but it is often the end of learning, since we choose to close ourselves off from anything that might go against our beliefs. I get it, as I said, life is hard to make sense of, maybe even impossible, and it’s a relief to feel like we’ve found an answer, something to help us get by with a feeling of being in control. I’ve never been able to believe in anything to the point of having absolutely no doubt, because I know that life is unexpected and mysterious, and I know that the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. Who am I to pretend like I have it all figured out, when I’m just one person living one life, among billions of other people who inhabit the world at any given moment? What about all of their life experiences, their thoughts and feelings? I’m sure that many of the conclusions others have come to from their own experiences are probably completely opposite of what I think I’ve realized in my twenty-something years on this earth, and that’s okay, that’s the way it should be. The beauty of life is trying to understand others, to connect with them, to share what we can and to receive what we can so that we may come to some sort of mutual understanding. In the same way, all of the elements within ourselves can lead us to many different conclusions about life, but if none of them are constant, then are we really the same person at all times? I am no longer who I was ten years ago, or even yesterday, and I’ll probably be much different many years from now. Life is a constant learning journey, and learning from others can help us understand ourselves. We can see the similarities in our differences. The Greeks had the concept of the world as a Mother, Mother Gaia, and although these days we use the earth for our own monetary gain, because of greed, it could possible that the earth is a sentient being, maybe every planet and galaxy is alive. Just like little microscopic bacteria live on us and all around us, and they probably see us as a huge landscape to walk on, to live on, perhaps we can’t see this planet earth for what it truly is because we are so small. Even though we are physically small, we are connected to the entire universe, and our spirit is immortal, the same thing that keeps me alive is what keeps you alive. We breathe the same air, the same air that humans breathed thousands of years ago, we are all connected by invisible bonds. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by such complexity, and I’m not exactly sure what to make of it, what to do with it all. Then I remember that this is the beauty of life, observing, learning, understanding, not understanding, putting pieces together, taking them back apart, making mistakes and growing from them, failing and feeling the motivation to succeed. In this age of materialism, I really think it would do the world much good if we would all look within, if we could all stop trying to associate with groups and ideologies, and instead look within ourselves and ask ourselves who and what we are. I think if we looked deeply and honestly, we would find a lot of good within ourselves, and this would inspire us greatly to connect with others, to do something great in the world, not in terms of amassing wealth, but in terms of creating genuine connections with others, in terms of being there for those who need us, being overall more attentive to the world around us.

much love

~ rebel eye

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DAY 29 (1000 WORDS, 3rd attempt)

The days pass and everything changes like the year’s seasons. We search for meaning but things happen seemingly without reason. We laugh and we cry and we try our best to forget the fact that we were born to die. We were born to die but we were also born to live. We were born to love and to find the treasure within us which only we can give. We say goodbye, we sit with our memories of brothers and sisters who relocated to the sky. It’s a beautiful thing to believe, but sometimes I can’t help but wonder if we all just choose to be naive. We try to distract ourselves but we know deep inside that we’ll always grieve, for the people we wish we could see again, the dreams that we fought our hardest for but still couldn’t achieve. Not everything is meant to be, and I hope we all come to realize that, eventually. We roll with the punches, we swim with the waves, we give in to pleasures which keep us enslaved. Everything’s a mess, the passion and the stress, the love and the hate, for injustice, for the hypocritical and fake. We apologize, then we make the same mistakes. We don’t know the game we’re playing in, some day it’s karma, some say it’s a sin. Nobody wants to lose, but there have to be losers for others to win. Survival of the fittest, could it be true? Could this be the way we’re meant to live? Is there anything about it that we can even do? The strong kill the weak, we struggle with the deepest truths within our soul which are to complex to speak, 60 seconds make a minute, seven days complete the week. Did God create it all, at the genesis of creation when the wild birds sang? Did we all come from an explosion of elements? The big bang? Religion and philosophy, division and atrocities. We move through life with an insane velocity, accumulating more than we need but never practicing generosity. I can’t provide hope, my rhymes are all over. High me doesn’t recognize me sober. Drugs, alcohol, fascinating substances, some live their whole lives attached to them but never know what substance is. Pleasure takes the place of meaning, entertainment becomes more demeaning. We try to escape reality through books and movies, or daydreaming. We can’t face the facts, so we try to out others down to make up for what we lack. Fighting over male and female, white and black, we sell our time for money that we can stack, up as high as the sky like the tower of Babel, we kill our own brothers like Cain did Abel. With words, with looks, with spite, we never forgive, as if we were unable. I don’t mean to generalize, I guess I jus feel like venting about what I see with my eyes. What I hear with my ears, people living full of fear, media propaganda which is toxic, like Britney Spears. Not talking about her, just a reference to the song. I used to spend all my nights with my speakers and bong. Weeded, never thinking whether I really need it. When I trip I think of family, the time I’ve wasted, the tears I’ve tasted. Addiction, got me thinking things stranger than fiction. Though I love it, often times I hold it all back because I don’t wanna be seen as a walking contradiction. But not anymore, I know we’re all very complex, universes live within our soul. Yet we hide out spirit just to fit into the mold. For the right price it seems any man can be sold. Slavery was never abolished. Nowadays we just do our work with our suit buttoned up and our shows perfectly polished. Just an exercise in rhyming, I wish I had better things to say but I can’t find the silver lining. I guess I need to work on my attitude, need to exercise gratitude so I’m not always whining. All this grinding, business meetings and contract signing, yeah we’re making more money but what are we really finding? Does truth not matter? What about all the functions that are installed in our greet matter? We live through tragedies and dreams that are shattered, broken in to pieces that the world tries to scatter. We suffer and we dwell in the pain, only end up feeling sadder. We receive wide advice but only end up getting madder. Some of us live in the moment, others plan to forever climb a ladder, up to the top of the world, higher up than the purest shatter. Concentrate. Attention spans decreasing, can’t concentrate. Constant technological stimulus crippling our ability to contemplate. To reflect and to realize. We only see the physical but we don’t exercise seeing with out real eyes. Relativity, truth seems to be what we want it to be. Inactivity, stuck in the house with nowhere else to be. But I still suspect that hope isn’t completely lost. We can make a change, but the more we wait the higher the cost. Stream of consciousness, I don’t know if I’m getting any point across, but this is just my mind, doing what I do, writing rhymes, attempting to find a bridge to cross. To where, I don’t know, but I feel like going. I feel like moving, I feel like feeling the rhythm and grooving, I feel like truly knowing. Instead of feeling confused, in a world of abusers and the abused, of people who feel like they have nothing left to lose. I’m already crazy, I don’t follow the collective opinion, so I might as well continue loosing the screws. Life can hurt, but I have to learn to heal quickly from whatever bruise. I’m not pessimistic, I know that in life we have the right to choose, but it just seems like in the test of life there’s more false then trues. Duality. The blues inspired the blues, now we jam to the emotions, music can have us feeling deeper than the ocean. Fuck all the commotion, I rhyme because rap is poetry in motion. Vibration, words that can uplift like levitation, we all do what we can and what we enjoy, or at least we try, before we die and head to our next destination. So don’t think too much, just do what you do, like I’m doing now, otherwise you’ll be stuck in procrastination. Your time will come, so just wait patient.

much love

~ rebel eye

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1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 73: Use Your Talents to Shine A Light.

Life’s about sacrifice, you gotta put in work because people’s hearts have grown cold as ice. No one is obligated to lend a helping hand, so don’t expect anyone to understand. But the trick is to not grow bitter and cold, even as we constantly witness the wicked ways in which life in this world unfolds. The point is to take a true hold of your own soul, to put the mind under the Spirit’s authority. We have all been blessed with skills and talents, with intelligence and wisdom, which we can use to bless, others as well as ourselves, to exert the will to progress, but too many of us have our gifts sitting on the shelves. We all have the ability to think and then to express, creatively, whether in poetry, lyrics, music, art, spoken word, to be true to who we were meant to be, and nothing less. Speak your mind and stand for what’s right, though it might shake up your whole world, possibly overnight. Stand by your word. Be who and what you claim to be, always take the high road, up high as a kite, fly forever free. Have the courage to follow the highest vision you see, to create what you conceive. Be a beautiful light, shining bright for what you believe, the brightest star shining on this blessed summer night. It is said that those who wish to give light must first burn. Take up your cross and sacrifice your physical self on it. Kill your attachments to earthly pleasures, especially those which harm others and cause suffering in the world. The right thing won’t always be the easiest one, or the most pleasant one, but we can’t possibly ignore what’s right and expect a good outcome. Recognize the wrong way and turn around to run. I thank those who paved the way for me, and I hope to do the same for generations to follow me, for years, for decades and centuries on, the legacy of everything we do lives on, we live forever even after we’re gone. So know that this is not the end, this misery nor this joy. There is more significance in every second of every day than we care to realize. I don’t know which is the right religion, but I do know that all of us are battling a spiritual war, so we were born with a mission. We all are meant to be, essentially, an example of righteous living, of unconditional care, of charity and selfless giving. Stop all the hate, leave the past behind and recreate, forgive and forget, leave behind every grudge as well as every regret, love for love’s sake. Be thankful for every friend, and even every enemy you’ve ever met. There are no enemies, have no fear for real or fake. Life has placed these people on our path, so that we may come to know what it’s like, to experience hate, pain, separation, rage, wrath. We had to know these things to come to know that they are not us. We are the consciousness on which these emotions, these thoughts and feelings appear, quickly fading away like dust, remain calm and watch them disappear. Let your mind rest, feel at ease, peace of mind is like a soothing breeze, close your eyes and meditate, elevate, feel the unity between you and everything that’s ever been, yet know that the source of you is something so great, that the angels are your kin. How were you conceived and born? How can you speak and connect with others, how can you understand concepts such as love and mutual respect? Life is filled of meaning, but it’s up to us to detect. So leave behind any notions of insecurity, of not being or having enough, stand proud and erect, if you woke up today there’s no excuse to feel like a wreck. Whatever you did, leave it behind and give yourself a chance. Life is in constant movement, so we have to jump in and dance. Roll with the rhythm, with discernment, don’t worry about the past or the future, everything will pass, everything is temporary, and everything is just as necessary. Be humble, understand that God dwells within your brother, within all others, and we all will one day decompose in a cemetery. The heavenly and material aspects of our nature each go their own way once death arrives, each from where it came, each continuing in changing, in transforming, after having gone back to the source, ascending and descending, coming down after they rise. Therefore there is no death, be free of guilt, and understand you have a new birth, a new chance at life, with every breath. Ignorance is the problem, none of us know this. We desperately run around trying to get ahead, we think there will be nothing left of us once we’re dead. Worldly success means everything, we can’t wait to get a taste of the satisfaction the money and the fame will bring. And what if the dream doesn’t  true? It doesn’t happen for so many others so why should it work out for you? Will you cry and complain, will you wish you were never born, will you speak curses upon yourself, upon your life, or life in general, screaming in pain? Identify with the real inside of you. Be the Spirit, don’t rely on anything on this planet. Analyze the nature of things, understand and plan it. Whatever you’re doing, sacrifice what holds you back. You know what it is, and if you haven’t let it go yet, it’s because you’re hooked on it like crack. The real You needs nothing to survive, spiritually, it only needs to be aware in order to be alive. Adversity is nothing to the real Self, it thrives off of challenges, your talents are your tools, use them for the glory of what’s good, don’t follow the crowd like a fool. Life is a process of constant learning, but one day we’re all sure to graduate, just like from any other school.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 74.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 70: The Mysteries of Life and Writing.

70 days into this writing goal, every day writing a thousand words and posting them on here. I’m not sure of what my purpose for this goal actually is, but I’m glad it’s become a daily habit to write. I wish I enjoyed it more though, since sometimes it seems like just one more goal I have to complete before midnight. I think what might be missing still is organization. I have to find a way to organize my ideas, and to plan certain days to write about certain ideas. So far I’ve just been randomly writing every day, going off whatever comes to mind when I sit down to write. I have a feeling that, maybe if I just write enough, maybe if I write consistently, every day, eventually I might create a masterpiece, something which people might read and really feel inspired. I feel so much significance in life, things connect in my head and I am in awe at the way in which life interacts with life. Over the past few years it’s become really overwhelming, so I’ve started to try to get things written down, but for some reason so many things which I want to express are hard to get into words. I guess it’s expected when one is constantly learning about spirituality and philosophy, but I hope I can start to get my ideas across a bit clearer soon. The most important idea that I want to get across to people is that, even if we don’t know the answers to all of life’s mysteries, even if we feel that life is meaningless at times, or worse, that it’s evil and cruel, we are only a part of life, each one of us, so we are in no position to decipher what everything in life means. Do you consider yourself evil? No? What about perfect and good in every way? That’s not you either right? We are all making up life, life includes us, so we can’t separate ourselves from it in order to ever examine it properly. Life is what happens to us every day, but life is also everything that happens without us, far away from us, every single day. Since we are not God, and we are not the creators of life, we must assume a position of humility. Too many of us associate humility with weakness, with being soft and allowing others to walk all over us. Humility is an attitude towards life. Someone who is humble has no need to justify his or her belief or to have others believe it. We can all use our sense of discernment to find what works best for us in our lives, what is right and what is wrong conduct, but humility means that we shouldn’t attempt to force others to live as we do. We can offer wise advice when we see our friends and family struggling, but we must understand that we are all free to live the life we have been blessed with. The reason I want to get this message across through my writing is because, once we understand this, that we are interconnected with life and that it is much deeper than it often seems, then we will be more likely to try to come to a fuller understanding of it. The person who, in his or her arrogance, thinks that his belief system is all there is to know, and that he has figured it all out, that life can be fully explained by any one religion or philosophy, has closed himself off from ever reaching higher truth. Humility is the first step towards properly living life. Once we assume a humble attitude towards life, then we are free to live, to interact, to understand. This is why I write, because, even though I do not have all the answers to life, at least I accept and understand that. I can write without pretending to have it all figured out, as a real person with real thoughts, trying to live a real life. I don’t know what will happen with my writing. I don’t know who will read it, or why, or what thoughts will pop into each reader’s mind as they read this, but I write because I know that life is made of connections, and that we must do what we have to do, even as we face uncertainty. Should I stop writing because I don’t know what will ultimately come of it, or even why I’m doing it at times? Of course not. We have to keep on moving in the face of uncertainty, and we have to keep on learning, on wondering, on connecting the dots of life, even if we are facing adversity, even if it seems like it isn’t worth moving on. Life is mysterious, and knowing that, really feeling that mysterious quality of life within myself, all the unknown potential which lies within every human being, has really sparked a flame in me, to read, to write, to share information so that whoever may read it may be inspired in some positive way. I started out this post with no idea of what I would write, and I even started writing my own answers to my own question down. Why don’t I enjoy writing more? I answered that I had to have more organization. However, once I got to writing I had more and more ideas, and now I’m not sure how I even ended up on this sentence, writing about what I’m currently writing about, about how life is so wonderful and mysterious. The point is that it just happened somehow, that something real which was on my mind was successfully transmitted into words for you all, and that now there’s no going back, all because I decided to just give it a go. Things are bound to happen in life, no matter what, and if we try to live with humility, we can try to understand and learn more about the things that happen in life and why, and we can learn to use those things in order to have better things happen in the future. Everything’s a mystery, so we might as well try and figure it out. we never know where life will take us, but it is sure to take us somewhere. Stop pretending to know everything, stop pretending that you know where you’re going. Be humble, seek help from those who know, and try to learn and understand, and then to put into practice.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 71.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 66: Life Is A Learning Process.

Life is a constant learning process. The ups and downs, trials and tribulations, the highs and lows that make up our lives, they can all be looked at and appreciated, if we can achieve such a state of mind, as the necessary pieces of the puzzle which makes us who we are. Life is about putting all the pieces together, about connecting all the dots in the right order, in order to see the bigger picture eventually. Life is really about trial and error, although we can learn beforehand about the things we consciously choose to become involved in. Some things just happen though, or at least we have no clue why they’re happening. Sometimes we have no way to prepare for such a situation, and in these cases learning happens on the spot. We have no choice but to learn. In reality, we learn from everything we experience, consciously and subconsciously, we are always learning, always changing into something new. We are never the same person, every passing second changes us in a profound way, even if we don’t experience the change in progress. Small changes that take a second give way to big changes that happen throughout a lifetime. Pain comes and passes, we curse and we cry, joy comes and we rejoice, but we cry when it leaves. We are relieved when the pain passes, and we appreciate life a little more, but for how long? Is it only a temporary feeling? Too often this is the case. We often overlook all the blessings in our lives by being too caught up in complaining. By focusing on the negative aspect of everything, we fail to be thankful for, or to even acknowledge, all the wonderful things in our lives, and we also fail to see how any positive result could come from the things that seem like total tragedies to us. The biggest problems in our lives are the ones that we could learn the most from, but too many of us are too afraid to do this, and we are also too afraid to even acknowledge our own cowardice. If we could dive deep into our despair, if we could stare sorrow in the face and smile at it, if we could master our emotions and all the thoughts that run daily through our minds, we could probably do a lot more learning, and a lot less complaining than we currently do. We could dig for gold in our problems if only we changed our attitude. We could trace the cause of every problem we face, and we would see that it starts with us, and that a change must therefore start with us as well, with nobody else. If we refuse to learn, if we run from distraction to distraction, hoping to avoid looking at the truth of our lives, we still will not be able to avoid learning completely. We can choose not to learn now, by discernment, but we will surely learn our lesson later, only we will have to learn it the hard way, probably not under very pleasurable circumstances. Life has a way of catching up to us, and there’s no escape from fate. We have free will to create our lives, but if we act out of ignorance, if we don’t know what knowledge even means, then are we really making conscious decisions, are we really free men and women? We talk way too much, and we all think we have the answer, we are all self-righteous in some way, and I’m not excluding myself. We all have to fight a constant battle, one that’s even more important, more intense, than any battle against external forces. We are all facing an inner battle against demonic forces, evils such as lust, greed, hate, jealousy, ambition beyond any reason. These are all things that are bound to lead to catastrophe if they are not placed under the power of the Spirit, or at least under the power of reason or common sense, which might not be enough. If we are not aware of this, then how can we even think of starting to learn about how to be free? How can we try to learn to live life if we think it is meaningless, if we think that nothing really matters and that life is just a constant quest for the most pleasurable feeling, for the highest high or the craziest thrill? We must do away with these ignorant notions. Life is meaningful beyond human comprehension, and we can learn something from everything. We can learn from good and from evil, we can learn from the kind and we can learn from the wicked, we can learn what is right and what is not right, we can learn from our parents, we can learn from priests or from politicians, we can learn from books or from crooks. Who we learn from often plays a big role in who we become in life, but the wisest teacher of them all is life itself. No matter who we choose to learn from in life, be it professionally or just in general, about life, no one can teach us like life can. Life is the master of life, it knows all there is to know about it, because it is life itself. The more we understand the deep significance of life, the more we try to connect with it, to really live and to feel it, to feel fully alive, the easier it becomes to understand life, to understand how to incorporate everything, the good and the bad, into our lives, how to keep calm and continue to move forward, how to trust in God, in life, and how to leave worry behind. We were not meant to live in fear or worry, so we must focus on living our lives as best as possible and on learning the most we can from every day we are blessed to live through. The first step is to humble ourselves and to accept that we don’t know much at all, that we are the humble students of life from now on.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 67.

~ Rebel Spirit

1,000 WORDS (2nd attempt): DAY 65: All Work and No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy.

Sometimes we think we’re the only ones who know how to really live life. We laugh at others who spend time thinking about or working on other things, things we personally could care less about. But we all have things we are interested in, and we all like to spend our time differently. We are free to do as we wish, all of us, and it is only natural that all of us would like to spend our time differently, seeing as how we are all very different and unique people. It’s true that some things are more productive than others, but who says that all activities have to be productive anyway? Some activities are done just to have fun, such as most games for example. Some games teach things as well, but the main idea behind a game is just to have fun. Some games allow us to win, or to lose, while some games are endless, they can’t be beat, and some are for one player, while some are for multiple players, so we see that the main purpose of a game is not always competition, it is simply to allow a person to have fun. Is there anything wrong with games because they are not leading up to anything productive? Are they simply a childish distraction from life? Not at all. We all love games, from small children all the way to elderly people. Babies are basically born playing, and whenever I visit my grandparents they’re diligently trying to fill in all the blanks of the newspaper’s Sudoku or crossword puzzle. Games like these are actually quite productive, since they allow us to exercise our thinking, as well our problem-solving abilities. It was actually a game of Sudoku which I played today, a game I’ve never seriously played before, which got me thinking about writing about this today. It was challenging, and I really had to use my brain. It took me quite a long time to fill in all the blanks. If we make a habit of doing such an activity every day then we will be sharpening our minds without a doubt. But apart from these productive games, there are many other games which, as we’ve mentioned, are not so productive. Should the playing of such games be avoided or kept to a minimum? In a way yes, but in a way no. I was never much of a gamer, but my youngest brother David really loves video games, and has a number of different consoles with different kinds of games for each one. My dad is always nagging him about reading a book, and sometimes I jump in as well and mention the fact that reading is a great way to learn about life and the world, but I feel bad because I don’t want to make it seem like gaming is an inferior activity, like he’s wasting his time by having fun. It’s true that we can become addicted to video games, that we can dedicate way more time than necessary to our progress in any game, but the games themselves cannot be blamed. We need to look at the attitude of the player. Everything in life requires balance, so it’s not good to do nothing but play. But the opposite is also true, since people who avoid all kinds of fun and games and are completely obsessed with study, or philosophy, or religion, or with any other scholarly subject, are often missing out on a lot of joy in life. Such people are usually attempting to cut fun out of their lives since they feel that it is a necessary sacrifice, one which they are willing to make in order to finally achieve that great success they are dreaming about. Not everyone can reach the greatest heights however. Many people go through life despising all the good things they’ve been blessed with. They can’t stop to play with their children, they can’t have a fun moment with their wife or husband, and they can’t let their children be children either, since they are always trying to get them to grow up. Other parents never teach their kids responsibility, and this is a great mistake, but to teach nothing but discipline with no time for fun is not good at all either. When I decided to stop drinking and smoking excessively, to start reading philosophical and spiritual books, to start meditating and trying to live life right, I unfortunately became a bit obsessed for a time. I was sick of my old life, and I knew that I needed to make radical changes in my life in order for me to really be able to change, in order to see some real results. The discipline was definitely needed, but one thing which I regret is having been so uptight about it in the beginning. I desperately wanted to change, and so I hoped to spend every second of the day meditating, reading, learning, watching documentaries, etc, and I started to look down at the world, as if everyone everywhere is always wasting time, as if people are simply passing the time without doing anything productive. I felt like this had been my life up until then, drinking and partying and wasting time, so I saw nothing but that in people’s lives. I was bothering my wife about playing too many games on the iPad, I was complaining to her, asking why she doesn’t like to read more, or isn’t more interested in spiritual or philosophical subjects. Everyone has their path to walk, and learning to live life right should not cause us to become more serious than it is good to be, it shouldn’t turn life into one long sacrifice, and it should not cause us to look down at other people simply because they don’t choose to spend their time in the same way as us. Sometimes all we need to do is to stop worrying, to sit back and relax, and to play a game and forget about the stress.

To be continued tomorrow, on Day 66.