Dying at Night

Love is like an enigma - a visual poem

Fire & Ice - A twisted desire - a visual poem

Fire & Ice - A twisted desire - a visual poem

The Nature of Prison Institutionalization

The Silver Years Ahead of Us

The Silver Years Ahead of Us

 

One thing we all have to admit is how the silver years creep up on you and before you know it, years have passed since you retired. In the meantime, you had thought about doing a variety of things but for some reason or another, you have become a couch potato and inactively going through the day without any exercise or stimulating activities including trips and out going places.

Have you been thinking about being more active now that your clock has stopped and the watch you wear is just for looks? Have you been thinking about going for walks or eating less food but you feel like there is no hurry to get to such a point in your life? Whether you realize it or not, the clock is ticking and your heart is not as strong as it used to be so maybe you should get off that couch and do a little exercise.

We know two things for sure; old habits die hard and life’s clock does not stand still. We get old and we get old faster if we become inactive and do nothing about staying active and eating better.

We know that making changes does not come easy. It takes years sometimes to change old habits into new habits. While you are undergoing such thoughts of changing, you will find many obstacles and barriers along the way working on discouraging you to make this change you are thinking about.

Somewhere along the way, whether it be the death of a friend, a relative or someone you worked with, the reality hits you square in the face and makes you realize you need to change your ways. Not just your daily routine but your way of thinking, your priorities and your health habits. It’s time for you to wake up and realize you are but a step away from heart problems, diabetes, crippling diseases or bone degeneration if you don’t change your life.

It is time for you to make a move and find ways to get motivated and improve your habits. You have to change and you know it can’t be done overnight so you decide to take four steps to make it work for you. Changing your behavior will take serious contemplation to plan it; reasonable and rational preparation to start it, time and opportunities to take the action to do it and create a new lifestyle to give your new life a means to maintenance to keep it up.

STAGES OF CHANGE DIAGRAM

■ 1. CONTEMPLATION	■ 2. PREPARATION	■ 3. ACTION	■ 4. MAINTENANCE
“I’m thinking about it.”	“I have made up my mind.”	“I have started to make changes.”	“I have a new routine.”
You are thinking about change and trying to become more motivated to get started. You might be in this stage if ..You have been considering change but you are not ready to start. ..You believe that your health, energy level, or overall well-being will improve if you develop new habits. ..You are not sure how you will overcome the roadblocks that stand in the way of success.	You are making plans and figuring out specific ideas that will work for you. You might be in this stage if ..You have decided that you are going to change, and you are ready to take action. ..You have set some specific goals that you would like to meet. ..You are getting ready to put your plan into action and get started soon.	You are acting on your plan and making the changes you set out to achieve. You might be in this stage if ..You have been making eating or physical activity changes in the last 6 months or so. ..You are adjusting to how it feels to eat differently or be more active. ..You have been “troubleshooting” to overcome things that have blocked your success.	You have become used to your change and have kept it up for more than 6 months. You might be in this stage if ..Your change has become a habit. ..You have found creative ways to keep going and stick with your routine. ..You have had slip-ups and setbacks but have been able to get past these snags.

 

 

 

The True Way to Find Pleasure & Pulsation of Life

The True Way to Find Pleasure & Pulsation of Life

 

We are often worried about missing life’s pleasures. We talk about having bliss and happiness in our lives but rarely feel we have known, experienced or understand the significance well enough to explain it to others. The truth escapes us sometimes when we talk about life’s pleasures and pulsations as these are vibrations of life considered to be the ultimate orgasm of life itself.

As humans, we can experience bliss. It is believed to be a separated emotion from the other sensory elements humans possess and is in fact something desired but rarely experienced until sometime after the happiness or event has happened. You might say it is part of the reflection where you grasp and understand the moment much better than at time it occurred. Bliss can seem too unreal and unattainable for some people, at best it is experienced at rare moments in your life.

Bliss is a higher state of pleasure. It is a spiritual state of mind. It happens in those fully conscious moments of unobstructed emotion as the human body and mind bond for a moment as one and make it seem like an out of body experience. It is a rare form of energy and is considered to be one of the purest forms of pleasure. It is the harmony of a perfect union between the hearts, the soul, the body and the energy provide. It seems to be cosmic in nature and origin.

One cannot place their hands on bliss. One cannot feel the pulsation or rhythm of bliss through their sensory preceptors or body. So whether you are a liberated person or one who has no blocks of nature’s inhibitions, bliss carries with it positive energy and a high degree of pleasure. It is a moment in time where the pulsation of positive energy overcomes the negativity and erases the fear of our most basic inner struggles with life itself. It simulates an out of body experience but is real to the person who attains this flow of energy throughout their existence.

Bliss, pleasure and positive pulsations can never be achieved by those who block the human mind’s obstructions to happiness and freedom.  It cannot be experienced by those who block their spiritual self and deny them the pleasures of life. One must have the capacity for pleasure to experience it. One must have the means of carrying this pulsation of energy to a higher degree to attain bliss. Thus the human mind and spirit are interactive and required to achieve an interdependent relationship that produces bliss.

One has to ask quickly, what are these obstructions or blocks that may hinder pleasurable times and bliss. How can you become aware of such impediments and what shall you do to reduce them as you long to reach a state of bliss. If you can’t reduce them, how do you remove these barricades in your life? The fact is, longing for bliss does not come easy. One has to work for it with deliberate effort. One has to fight a war within themselves at times to conquer the spirit and energy for such pulsations of bliss.

Pleasure, in the real sense, is intensely fleshly and intensely spiritual. There is no division between the fleshly and spiritual state. So pleasure is the ultimate reality. Bliss is not—as religion seems to imply in its misunderstood interpretations—a reward for having been “good.”  Bliss is the natural state of a unified being in harmony with itself and the universe.

If you want to attain bliss you have to devote time and effort to this adventure. In the journey, you will feel increasingly personal fulfillment and self-growth along the way. The capacity to love intimately and completely with your body, soul, and spirit will be the goal that simultaneously advances your self-purification—for one cannot exist without the other.

Obstructions come in many forms and are a manifestation of division, conflict and denial of things in your life. Associated pains are frustrations, anger, mistakes, sins, morality, personal dissatisfactions or lack of confidence, commitment and a variety of human pleasures that seem real but have hidden motives or substitutes for what is really required to make you happy and at peace with yourself.

How can you truly commit yourself to integrity, truth, deepest honesty and a positive approach to yourself and life?  Do you possess an altered ego, distorted pride? How can you wish to abandon negative pleasure, these false satisfactions of your pretenses, your role-playing, and your defenses?  Failing to abandon such negative energy creates negative pleasures but conflicts with your reality of living with bliss.

How can you truly commit yourself to integrity, truth, deepest honesty and a positive approach to yourself and life?  How can you wish to abandon negative pleasure, the pseudo-satisfactions of your pretenses, your role-playing, your defenses?  One has to ask, who is cheating on who?

As long as you are convinced that these substitutes are all the pleasure you can have and that living a decent life implies sacrifice, you cannot even believe in pleasure. This difficulty is intensified because you cannot bear pleasure exactly to the degree that you cling to all these false ways of life. You become capable of taking in genuine pleasure only to the degree you give up the false, negative pleasure.

You must find a way to break through the vicious circle in which you are caught, which goes like this:  The less you truly want to give up all the subtle falsities and destructive defenses, the less you can accept pleasure.

Therefore you cannot believe in it; therefore you cannot want to give up that which obstructs you from experiencing it; therefore both the will and commitment to experience pleasure, nor the giving up of destructive, life-inhibiting patterns can exist.

Your innermost being does not make it possible. Your energy is engaged in negative inner activities. By the same token, to the degree that you assume self-responsibility, to the degree you respect and love yourself because you no longer cheat even in the subtlest of ways, to that same degree you become more and more capable of experiencing pleasure.

The more you can look forward to a full and blissful existence, the less hard it will seem to give up these destructive patterns on the deepest level imaginable, to stand on your own feet, to accept necessary frustrations. The equation of the acceptance of full autonomy with the capacity for pleasure is extremely important to comprehend. One is not possible without the other.

To begin this journey you must learn how to meditate and find the connection between truth and reality. You can only attain bliss when you are honest with yourself and become less dependent on others for your emotional and personal growth.

One has to abandon fear, hate and resentment for others and live within the means provided by the energy maintained as it pulsates through your mind and body.  Therefore pleasure and spirituality, pleasure and decency, pleasure and emotional maturity, pleasure and physical health are all intricately and intimately connected.

Reference:

http://pathwork.org/lectures/pleasure-the-full-pulsation-of-life/

A poem - Alone in the Redwood Forest - April 2015

 

Alone in the Redwood Forest

 

Last night I looked up in the sky and felt a deep painful sensation penetrating my heart.

The dark black draped sky covered the billion stars that usually blink at me as I walk the dark alone

It was so harsh, so unexpected and most of all, it took my breath away, making me feel dizzy and lightheaded like never before I could recall

Except that time when I came back from the war and on my knees I fell, and thanked you from my heart so grateful, that like so many other, in the battle I did not fall

 

I wanted to feel alive again, I wanted to be free of worry and pain

I knew that running away was not the answer, so here deep in the forest I must stay until I could figure out a way

In time, I could breathe again, the pounding on my chest had stopped and the pain was almost completely gone

Staring up to the sky through the tall tall trees, I felt a lump in my throat and began to ask God why? Why do I feel this pain inside me, oh Lord, what have I done?

Do I not call you my Father, do I not embrace your only son? So tell me Lord, what evil sin have I done?

 

For years, I have been feeling lonely, oh not the kind where you are alone, but when you feel an emptiness inside you, a rapid heartbeat and a conscience that wouldn’t leave me alone

It happens each and every single time, I think about the past, and those who I had loved once before are now in heaven and already gone

I can’t forget their faces, I remember the obsession of them hanging around, I can sense they are basking in the sunlight, their trouble no worries no more

I detect they have changed and different, since the time they left and went away

There must be a way where I say “I love you” and let them know this each and every day

 

So when I feel like this, I head out to the forest, where my eyes are adorned by lush filled green leaves and wild flowers all around me

Each tree is full, each branch is dancing in the wind and down on the ground I can see and smell the fresh growth of moss on their trunks covering them making the trees ready for winter

Right beyond the trees, I knew were the red rock cliffs and caves in every nook and cranny where the animals rest when winter snow falls

Up in the sky, there are birds chirping and singing, as I can hear Mother Nature’s calls

 

The clarity and simplicity is what my head needed to see what life was all about and how I had drifted so far away, I forgot how to be enchanted by the silence and the beauty all around.

I wish I could bring this cluttered tree formation with me wherever I go

I wish I could smell the fragrance of the hundred shades of green as the sun peeks through the leaves and lets me know it’s the perfect time of the day to pray

And thank my God for the blessings bestowed upon me, and those with who I share life with and love forever with me stay

It’s a perfect time to make peace with inner self so that the pounding heartbeat fades and brings me back to the comfort and oak-filled oasis surrounding me and let me know, I am prepared for the change of season and reason under the stars of heaven and God’s purpose in keeping me safe