Pick your life...

"Be at least as interested in what goes on inside you as what happens outside. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place"
-Eckhart Tolle

Pandora radio is my new favorite toy.  I did a few weeks on the blues channel and spent the last several weeks on the heart meditations channel which helped inspired my last few blogs.  This week I'm flashing back to 1997.  I searched "Trance" and stumbled upon some cool electronic stuff. I forgot how much fun this music is.  The peaks are predictable, they pay off  every time. Oh, and the glow sticks! It reminds me of the first summer my friends and I had access to a car.  We use to blast Oakenfold and cruise around acting like we were the coolest cats in town. Although it was missing it's back bumper I thought my dad's Hyundai Sonata was pretty hot...although back then we would have used the slang "tight" to describe it. 

I didn't really know what I wanted to write about tonight, but a few ideas just popped out so I'll go with what I've got. The shift I've been going through continues, although I guess I'm settling back into a normal rhythm. I had a week or so where I was almost euphoric while listening to the audio book "The End of Your World" by the San Fransisco based spiritual teacher Adyashanti. It's an off the cuff western approach to Zen Buddhism. I found myself sitting around completely at ease, almost tapped into the vibration of life.  It was a pretty surreal feeling at first and then it just felt incredible for a few days. He warns however not to get "drunk on zen"...or get the idea that just because you realize you aren't your ego and there is no "self" per se you can't walk around completely blissed out and detached.  You still have to be in the world. Still I'm trying to make good use of the idea of "no self". I've wrapped it into a little package of ideas that remind me I'm not very important, my problems are merely challenges that often turn out to be tools for learning and the universe can easily function without me...or us for that matter. Humanity could just be a hypothesis being tested in an ever expansive divine experiment.

I sat around with great friends tonight chatting up an array of the world's issues.  We beat a few dead horses, covering just about everything in the political and sociological arena.  Making new friends this year has been very rewarding.  I think this is an area of my life that has been lacking since I moved across the country.  I've been in St. Louis three years and I'm just now figuring out the lay of the land.  Getting down into the city has been fun.  It's an experience I never got growing up in Louisiana as the downtown region in Baton Rouge was all but abandoned before I was born. I was a suburban kid, pretty sheltered really. I haven't made my social life a priority for some time.  So much of life these last few years has been about making up for lost time.  Trying to climb the latter at work and achieve the things society deems necessary. I felt a lot of guilt about my drinking and for what I saw as squandering opportunities accademically and professionally. It dawns on me today that life really isn't worth living if you don't have cool people to share it with. One thing that scares me about going back to school next semester is the time commitment. I've been having so much fun lately.  When you know what's important you don't really feel busy..at least I don't.  I just do what I want.  This includes going to work because I need a paycheck, but spending time with Katie, getting into exercise, playing around with my new veggie diet and making a lot of time for friends are all at the top of my list. And the list stays pretty short.  Aside from maybe raising a kid and spending a ton of time with people I love, I don't really see any higher purpose in life.  I guess that is the higher purpose!  I'm not out to be the next Bill Gates. That's not really my trip.

If there is anything that my new interest for Zen philosophy has taught me is that at the source of this thing there is a massive amount of energy that wants to move forward and expand.  That's the best way I can understand it.  The word "thrive" keeps coming to my mind.  Nietzsche called this the will to power.  He describes in "Beyond Good and Evil" how even a simple object like a vine will exert its will  by tangling itself around a tree, slowly growing up through its canopy to get to the sunlight.  All life wants not only to survive, but to grow as well.  I don't know if I agree with Nietzsche that we innately use this instinct to dominate. Tears for Fears sings that awesome song about how we all want to rule the world.  However I receive much more joy in letting go of the steering wheel. I found myself very discouraged a couple of time this weekend and simply had to accept that what was happening was the universe unfolding. People being people, life being life.

When you let go you attract an incredible amount of prosperity into your life.  I don't neccesraily mean in the form of money or material. The amount of love I have experienced in the last month has been awe inspiring. That's the big jackpot. You can feel it everywhere if you look for it.  People react to you in a totally diffirent light when you come from a place of love.  I think you have to choose how you want to see the world. Essentially you will manefest the world you reflect on.  If you're pissed you're going to see a shitty world as my weekend proved to me.

Will you see the world from the perspective of love?  Will you choose to attract friendship, smiles at the coffee shop, calmness from your coworkers and peace in your home? Give it a shot!

mellow