Powerful Way to Become Motivated

Now, before I begin, let all of your associations fly out of the window. Allow yourself to not see my words as words that you have seen and heard before, but as words that can actually apply to your life.

Think about what you currently do in an average day. Do you play a lot of video games, watch a lot of TV or watch movies often ? Sure, it might be the norm. Sure, no harm comes out of it. And sure, maybe you might believe that we're on this planet to primarily enjoy ourselves. That used to be my attitude/rationale at least. Doing any sort of work seemed like it only affected the world in which we live. Thus, if I'll be gone one day, what's the point besides making enough money to survive ?

Have you ever heard the saying "Live like tomorrow will never come" ? I'm sure you have. People who party like to spout it off as if all of their choices and decisions can be chalked up to this philosophy. But save that thought.

That saying doesn't seem to mean much to anybody outside of that crowd. "Sure maybe tomorrow will never come, but it's pretty likely that it will." or "That's what people without a goal in life like to say." I again was of the same thought not too long ago.

Until I started reading a book written by the Dalai Lama, titled "Advice on Dying". Much to my surprise, he had the same sort of philosophy. He insists that we should dwell on the aspect of death and impermanence so that we can make the most of our time here. The key difference was him not suggesting that maybe we'll die tomorrow, so go have a fun night on the town, but him advising us to realize how little time we will have on this planet. This is even assuming we live to be one hundred years old. That is but a fraction of how long the human race has been and possibly will be here.



So why not make the most out of every single day that goes by? Think about how fast a day, a week, and a year goes. Can you say you accomplished as much as you could have in the past year? In the past month or week? The more we put off for later, the less we'll ultimately get done, because our motivation and energy will be no different when it comes time to do those things.

I'll leave you with one final thing. One hundred years may sound like quite a long time to get things done. However, we sleep away a third of our life, and the first 15 and last 15-30 years are unproductive. This means we have as little as twenty years to truly get done what we want to do in our lives.

Analogy

I like drawing connections from normal things that happen in our culture today to deeper understandings. As it so happens I just came across one today.

Tattoo's are where we'll start. Have you ever heard somebody claim that somebody else's tattoo is stupid and meaningless ? "Did you hear that becky got stars on her arm? That's like the dumbest tattoo you can ever get." Well the obvious (or maybe not) retort to that is that the person probably holds more value and finds more meaning in the tattoo than the person making fun of them does. Let me create an example to demonstrate my next point.

Becky gets a yin yang symbol on her upper back. Scott sees the tattoo and thinks that Becky has it because it represents good and evil (which is a Western misconception), so he doesn't even question her about it. But really Becky has it because she likes to be reminded of finding balance in her life. Since Scott never asked her what it meant however, he may associate things that she does with good and evil, thus creating many labels and views which aren't correct. Okay, now if you've been able to follow me up until this point, I have the final connection to make.

Take that scenario and blow it up to encompass all of social life as we know it. Race is a narrow look at how just one thing about a person can make us label them in our head as associated with other people of the same race. But even broader, I'm willing to argue that just about everything that people do gives us clues as to who they are. And you might say well yeah, that's common sense. But there's one problem here. We don't know the intentions (meaning of the tattoo) of others. Somebody can say something that you find completely strange so you may not want to talk to them again, but they probably didn't find it strange because they saw different meaning in their own words. So, stop judging others based on what little you know about them, and try to dig deeper.

Education Plan

I had this idea back in high school, but I never bothered to write it down since I figured it wasn't practical. The idea formed out of a frustration with how impersonal high school is when it comes to talents/interests. Projects come close to solving this, but they are usually packed with information or vocabulary.

So what if each class adopted a semester-long (or two semester-long) project which
emphasized that class and let creativity flow endlessly ? I'll list the ones that I've thought of so far. The cons I'll list along with each item, but the pros are universal, and include a very individualized experience, an outlet for creativity, and perhaps a boost to confidence. As well as learning the material in a very hands-on approach.

English
A short-story or small book.
The teacher could require a page a week perhaps with vocabulary that's been learned, or something of the sort, and grade each page, then at the end of the semester the teacher would require students to read the other student's stories and give them a grade.

Cons: Wouldn't prepare student for "College Writing".

Biology
Raise your own plant/animal. Student's choice.
Every student would have assignments based around their "pet" which would increase interest because it's more personal.

Cons: N/A

Computers
Create your own video game.
Self-explanatory. More interesting than creating programs to convert temperature.

Cons: Would require some artwork, but they could pair up with a digital art class.

Marketing
Sell your own product.
Find a malleable object that each student could turn into their own, and then either open a booth at school to sell, or go to a fest/bazaar.

Cons: To focus on marketing, emphasis would have to placed on the selling, not the creation.


Some of these are already being done, so it may not shock you into siding with me, but my vision would have all of these be an integral part of the student's life/education where they would actually be excited to write about each and take advantage of the teacher's knowledge.

A Religious Framework

I've been thinking lately about the problems with religion. Not just from a philosophical standpoint like "How can you know if God exists?", but from a social standpoint more so. As I see it, there's three problems that exist that I think can be solved.

- There's often conflict between religions.
- A lot of people are ignorant of religions besides their own.
- Sometimes difficult to find right religion for you, more of a gamble at times.

Now I'll explain the system that needs to be put into place to solve these issues. Don't exactly have a name for it, so I'll call it the Modern Framework. The idea would be for there to be an organization which acts as a step before religion.

Say you got sick of Christianity and were interested in a new religion. You would have the opportunity to come to us, tell us your situation and then they would help you along in finding a new religion. It wouldn't be a religion in itself, although it would have ideals such as "No god is better than any other" and "No religion is truer/realer than the rest". They would lay out the religions in front of you, and have an expert on religious studies work with you to choose the right one based on your personality, beliefs, etc.

I'm sure you can spot holes in this, such as religions not allowing you to join with these "Global truths", or conflict between the framework and religions who don't trust it. However, I thought it was a neat idea.

Problem With Words

Do you ever wonder why you connect so well with people that you've experienced many things with? I did. Most people chalk it up to just enjoying their company more and feeling more connected to them, but that's too abstract for me. Think about a conversation with one of your best friends. Then think about a conversation with somebody you never really talk to and don't get along with.

The major difference is the ability to read the meaning behind words. Examples are the only way to portray this. If I were to tell my best friend that a lady "looked huge", he would laugh because I'm rising above the norm which would be calling her fat, so it's encompassing a whole new world of weight. If I said that to some girl I barely knew, she may see it as the same word as fat, so would find it rude.

You could say that context plays a huge part, and I wouldn't say you're wrong. But try to look at words from a basic level. When you use words, adjectives in particular, how do you think of that word to use? You think of past experiences that are relative to that situation. This is the problem with words. Everybody has
different past experiences, so you're not always going to find common ground with words. When people don't see eye to eye, this is the problem. The problem isn't that the other person is close-minded or an idiot. The problem is that they're not understanding what you're trying to say because your words are chaos to them, while they are perfectly in order to you.

So then how can you find common ground? Smart people already do this without realizing it. They spout out synonyms for the words they're trying to get across, because "good" might mean so-so to one person while "great" will actually accomplish what you're trying to communicate. I'm going to keep looking into this, as I find it fascinating.

Thinking Exercise

This might be an odd thing to try for you if you've never sat down and really thought.

Go someplace quiet and sit down comfortably. You want to make sure you're comfortable so that your thoughts don't concern your posture. Now, try to clear your mind a little bit. No techniques are necessary, just relax and become aware of all of your thoughts.

Proceed to shut your eyes and imagine any sort of shape right in front of your eyes. Try to picture all of your thoughts traveling through this shape as if they don't even know it's there. Now try to push all of your thoughts from this shape. Make the inside of this shape become a safe haven where it's completely devoid of thought.

This is where mostly everybody will differ and where I'm interested in hearing what happens for you. First I'll tell you what I experienced. My shape was a circle. I went ahead and pushed all of my thought outside of it and succeeded, for a few seconds. Then a thought of the actual circle came into my mind. It wasn't on this 2D plane that the circle was limited to, so I didn't see it coming. This effectively raises a multitude of questions. Do we think in three dimensions? Do we think in perhaps even four dimensions? Are there layers of thought? Is it possible to completely control your thought so that new branches don't form? For that matter, what shape is the thought process? These are questions I hope to answer with practice.

After that I tried forming a sphere to block out the third dimension but it was too complex to maintain and I just broke off into thinking about something else, forgetting the circle.

Religion and Faith

Faith. Faith. Faith. There's few things as powerful as it to move a person's spirit to do things. This is particularly the case when it comes to religion. For whatever reason, when a close-minded person or a child first latches onto a religion, they follow it unconditionally. Maybe close-minded was the wrong word. Just, a person at a lower level of spirituality. It's like these people need a set of rules and laws to shape their life around. Also, it doesn't hurt that there are many others of the same faith so they can feel like they belong.

But I want to meet more of these people. I want to see if I'm right in cutting them down so quickly and revealing what I think is their character. Some people that I've come across who are dead-set on their religion really don't want to be proved wrong. Because if they are proved wrong, their world shatters around them. It's reminiscent of people who join a cult, and can't be persuaded to leave.

Don't get me wrong, not everybody who has a religion has blind faith or is wrong in any way. Some people have true faith in their religion, and that's the right way to go, as long as you stay open-minded and aren't afraid to question your religion.

Your World

Try this .. try imagining that you're the only person on the planet. There's no responsibilities, no obligations to others, nobody's opinion matters except yours because there isn't anybody else. Your scope of the world is essentially the entire world. Nothing else matters besides what you experience throughout your life. In your own world.

Now imagine that every person on the planet was imagining this at the same time. THIS is what our world is truly like, although nobody will admit it. Other people will come into your world and bring theirs with you, but we need to keep a grasp on our own world, or else we risk losing who we are to others. There are some out there that grasp onto other people's worlds and just get taken along for the ride, having no sense of control. When they return to their world to try to regain their sense of control, they find their world vastly empty, waiting to be rebuilt. But instead of rebuilding it, most choose to instead attach to another person's world again, and another's after that.

I'm not trying to encourage the idea that you should spend all of your time alone, as there's much to be gained by loving and learning from others. But if you find that you don't truly know yourself, maybe you should reflect and go rebuild your world.

Daily Growth

It's been awhile since I posted. I guess you can say I've been caught up in life stuff.

Do you ever feel like you could be doing more with your life? Learning, exploring, growing. It's easy to not do these things when it's not required. It's not like anything is going to happen if you don't do them. Why not just grab some food and go watch TV like everybody else? Because then you're just as bad as everybody else.

People come up with excuse after excuse on why not to better themselves. "I'm not even very smart." "I know I can't do that." I'm not here to tell you you're wrong, I'm here to tell you you're exactly right. But only because of yourself. Telling yourself these things is essentially putting up a brick wall in front of your path to growth. You don't necessarily have to be the most confident person around to avoid this, you just can't doubt yourself.

Yet, you have to want to grow as a person for your own reasons. The majority of people who quest for knowledge or spirituality do so because of competition. Who wouldn't want to be better than everybody else at their job or be able to brag about how close you are to whatever God you worship? Those who are modest. I'll admit it's a shot in the dark to ask everybody to jump from being couch potatoes to mature self-actualized individuals, but all I can do is hope.

Infiniteness

I was chilling on my porch today looking up at the sky, when I got to thinking. How large is the universe ? Nobody really knows for sure. The farthest we can see is about 15 billion light years away, hence the approximated 15 billion year age of our universe. But I think it really shows a lot depending on whether you think the universe is only as large as how far we can see or if there's potentially unlimited amount of space beyond.


Some people see imagination as pointless because we live in the literal. In their minds, we're enclosed within the earth, our country, our job, our minds. Imagination is essentially an embodiment of freedom. And what else but the largest of these "containers" can show the limit of a person's freedom in their mind ? Of course, this isn't a for sure method, it's just an interesting test, much like "is the glass half-full or half-empty".

The Four Levels

Every person is naturally at a different stage on their journey to god or death or whatever. In his book, Further Along the Road Less Traveled, scott peck theorized that there are four stages of spiritual growth that a person may go through. Once I started categorizing people I knew into his system, I found a vast amount of truth in it.

Stage one :
- Chaotic, reckless, and disordered.
- Defiant and disobedient to everybody. Believe nobody is above themselves.
- Comparable to young children, some criminals, and low IQ individuals.

Stage two :
- Blind faith in God or authority.
- Attached to own self's views, doesn't question anything.
- Visualizes God as external, as a "Giant benevolent cop in the sky".
- Most law-abiding citizens never really move out of this category.

Stage three :
- Parents are generally stage two.
- Literal and scientific minded.
- Questions dogma and religion.
- Often agnostic, doubters of their religion, or atheist.
- Belief is gone. Everything has to be proven to them.
- Many teachers, press, teenagers, college students reside in this category for life.

Stage four :
- Enjoys the beauty of life and nature.
- Acquires a deeper understanding of the questions of life (good and evil, death, purpose of life, compassion and love).
- Can be of any religion or even atheist, and doesn't blindly accept things, but does so out of genuine belief.
- Doesn't judge others harshly, and rids themselves of ignorance.
- Learn to really love self and others.

Don't make the mistake of seeing this as four distinct categories. It is a hierarchy system, meaning each stage is more spirituality mature than the last. Also, you don't have to
fit into a single category, you can have qualities from a few, although it's uncommon. Individuals in stage four have been labeled throughout the ages as mystics because they are able to see cohesion behind physical reality. Personally, I think the method to working your way towards stage four is to just ask questions. It doesn't take somebody extremely intelligent to achieve the last stage, it just takes somebody real and in touch with themselves and their lives. Ignorance will hinder your progress greatly though, so learn to be more open-minded.

I would love to say that I'm completely in stage four, but I don't think I can quite yet. There's still much I have to learn, and I still retain the thinking of "it must be proven to me" sometimes. What category are you in ?

A Fish Out of Water

The idea has become prevalent because of 2012. But the definition is how a group perceives, attends to, and makes meaning of the world. Key word perceives. It's becoming more and more recognized that human thought could play a role in the physical world. Mind over matter. Literally.

Lately, I've been noticing a huge change in the way people think. Sure it may just be wishful thinking or coincidental, but perhaps it's the start of something huge. The Mayan prophecy isn't the only event that makes 2012 special. So is the age of Pisces. The age of Aquarius is coming to an end, and some interpret that as being a fish out of water. Or, the loss of our important resources which can lead to horrible things. I see it as a new era of enlightenment. No longer will be unable to explore the land, trapped by the limits of our watery world. Some have been able to jump out of water briefly and view the land, but now we will enter a period of change like no other.

Have you ever had a conversation with somebody that gets really deep, and it's almost as if you two are sharing thoughts? What if it was like that for every single person and for every word that comes out of your mouth? Humanity would be unified, which could lead to massive things, such as the concentration of our thoughts on one thing to change it, and making war and arguments obsolete.

Distorted Reality

I was reading this book called The Voice of Knowledge today, and it was discussing how every person sees reality in a different way. The book refers to this distorted reality as the person's "story". Personally, I found this vastly interesting.

The premise is that you build a web of lies inside your head from the day you learn to talk, and you see the world through this web. Nobody alive really sees the world for what it truly is, aside from those lucky enough to strip away the lies. Of course, this is much harder than you think, because you have to rid yourself of every assumption, every stereotype, everything. I'm sure there's been only a few people throughout history who have been able to do this, somewhere along the lines of Jesus and Plato.

And then there's the fact that everybody has a different web, and thus differences are created. Nobody's opinion is wrong within their own little world, but they are shocked when the collective web finds it wrong. Many people find comfort inside their own little world, and I can't really blame them. The second you attempt to reach out to other people's worlds, you're bound to find resistance. Maybe the entire core of love is melding your world with another's.

So, it always comes back to "who really cares?". Sure, now I know that everybody sees life differently through this sort of lens, what does that have to do with me? The wisest people in my opinion are those who are not ignorant and are able to dwell in other people's worlds and not feel the urge to correct anything the say, because they are right in their own world. Maybe if you learn to accept others more openly, and not be so quick to challenge what is right and what is wrong, you may become a bit more wise.

It's about time.

I was sitting in class the other day, waiting for the time to pass by. Then, I made the mistake of looking at the clock. I say mistake because most people would say that if you watch a clock time will go slower, because your mind won't stray from the thought of each second passing. Well, since I'm a rebel, I kept looking at the clock. The second hand slowly passed up the five, and I wondered how long it would take to get back to the five if I watched it. I then realized that I shouldn't be staring at clocks and should get back to my work.

That's when a peculiar thing happened. I couldn't get the five out of my head, no matter how hard I willed it. I tried over and over to stop thinking about the five, but as long as I knew that the second hand was coming back around to it, it stayed on my mind. Now take this out of context and turn that minute into an hour or a day. You're always thinking about the future and what you have to do. The future controls your actions in the present. Are we not then just puppets for time to play with as it pleases? Let's look at it in an even broader scope. A year. Everything in your life that you're working towards (family, work, school) has to do with what's going to happen in the next year or years.

What if we could eliminate this sense of living in the future? We would all be carefree and just enjoy life in the present. No worries.