Whose Body Am I Being?

  In pondering self-will, I realize that unless an activity came to me on my own and is following my own agenda only, I am being somebody else's hands, feet, etc.  With anything I think, do or say, I should ask myself whose body I'm being at that moment.  So often, the answer is that I'm being my parents even though they're thousands of miles away.  I'm living out ideas that they planted in me, in the exact same way that the Nazis were Hitler's hands and feet.  I'm just an extension of their body.  I see that that's what is called being a tool.
  To counter-act this, I must look at what my sole purpose is in this body.  It is to heal the space that I am in.  In order to do that, I must first know the space that I am in.  I need to become intimately familiar with the needs and lackings of everything around me.  Only in that way will I be able to provide those things for them.  I will be a steward of them.
  And when I do something that has offended someone, the solution is not to immediately try to fix the problem.  That would be my ego trying to soothe itself.  The solution is to take a good look at the deep inherent flaw in my character that caused me to do such a thing that could offend someone.  Once I have fixed that flaw, I will be in a place where repeating the offense would be less likely.  At this particular moment, I just need to grit my teeth an take full responsibility for whatever has happened.  It's too late to fix it now, but it's never too late to fix myself on the inside so as to not do that again if it is within my power not to.  If I am allowed to fix the problem now, I won't have to think about my flaws and it will entirely be the responsibility of the other person to point them out to me every time from here on out.
  Saying that I didn't mean to offend someone is never a good thing.  The very fact that I didn't mean something that happened is the problem.  I wasn't in full and absolute control of the situation.  If I was careful and acted in such a way that the outcome matched my intention, then offense is a lot less likely.  This is especially true with words.  If I choose my words carefully, so as to avoid misinterpretation, then it is more likely that my intended meaning will be conveyed instead of some hurtful misunderstanding.  Of course, the lack of care is usually the problem more than the misinterpretation.  It shows a disrespect for the intended listener.

My Brokenness

  The purpose of this writing is to explore my brokenness.  I'd like to define it, understand it and hold it.  I can't drop what I can't hold and I can't hold what I don't understand.  Once I've defined my brokenness, I'd like to explore its connection to my everyday activities.  The point of this is so that I can learn to love myself, understand who I really am and fully visualize who I'd like to be.  I am not my body, I am my soul.  Any limitations I've put on myself, whether or not they were ingrained by my parents or my own devising, are merely an illusion.  A soul cannot be limited in reality, only in my mind.
  Somewhere to start is by paying close attention to my sponsoring thought.  That is the thought behind my thoughts.  Is it coming from a place of love or from a place of fear?  What's my motivation behind everything I do and say?  If I don't know, then it is most likely not coming from love.  Only when I know that love is my motivating factor for everything I do and say, will my actions match my intentions.  Even good intentions can come from a place of fear.  That is where mine come from.  I intend to do good things because I am afraid of being wrong or stupid or bad.  I don't do good things because I care about the people that will benefit from them.
  This leads me to my next topic: selfishness.  It doesn't matter what my actions are that arise out of selfishness, they will end up badly for everyone.  It may seem that someone who is selfish only loves themselves, but that is not the case.  If they loved themselves, they wouldn't have to be selfish.  When you are selfish, you are only thinking of your wants.  You are ignoring your needs.  And if you can ignore your own needs, how can you think that you'll be considering other people's needs? Even if all you are thinking about is someone else's wants, that is not loving them either.  That is what enablers do for addicts.  They are not helping them by giving them what they want.  And don't think that doing a selfish act will end badly due to karma or some cosmic intervention.  Bad outcomes are merely a natural consequence of needs not being met.
  When I talk about needs, I'm not talking about the soul.  The soul needs nothing.  I'm talking about physical needs.  To always keep in mind everyone's needs takes care which takes love.  Love is the language of the soul, so you are feeding yourself spiritually when you are being selfless.  You are also feeding everyone else's soul.  Even if you have nothing physical to give to someone, if you are thinking about their needs, you are loving them.  The poorest man can give infinitely more to someone than the richest man can ever hope to.  A hug, compared to a million bucks will always win out if the one being hugged values themselves in a healthy way spiritually.
  'Conversations With God' says that it is through what you think of as evil and what you think of as good that you define yourself.  This is very interesting to me in that I've never put any thought into those things.  I have no idea what I consider to be evil or good.  No wonder I don't know myself!  This will take some soul searching, some meditation, some exploration.  I am such a blank slate.  No wonder everything confuses me.
  So far, the only things I can say for sure are that I think getting into trouble is evil and not getting into trouble is good. This definitely does define me.  I lie to myself saying that I live to please people or help them or care for them, when in reality, I merely live to try not to displease people.
  I was just thinking about how I can find some worth in this world when I realized how small I'm thinking.  I'm making myself so much smaller by shrinking the arena in which I perform.  It doesn't matter what this world thinks of me.  I'm not in this body to be important to this world.  I am in this body to experience life.  I am the eyes, ears and fingers of God.  When I truly come to value myself as a part of that universe, I become much bigger.  I've always tried to be a part of something to feel as if I belong somewhere, but it won't be until I'm not just a part of something that I will know that I am the whole of everything.  The opinions of this planet are tiny compared to the esteem of beings all over the universe who understand just what it is their up to and what it is I'm up to here.  Thinking I'm not important within that context would be like thinking that the band Slipknot isn't famous because the citizens of some podunk town in Montana have never heard of them.  And yet, this planet is important enough that people like Buddha, Jesus and Mother Theresa thought it was worthy to visit here.
  Oh, and by the way, final tally: 'The Nocent part 2: Advent of the Scathing' sold 108 copies worldwide during its 5-day promotion!

Dark Canyon

  I was just trying to find a release date for the movie that I was an extra in and made an interesting discovery.  It is no longer called, 'To Kill A Memory', it is now called, 'Dark Canyon'.  There's still no release date set, but IMDB says spring or summer of 2013.  At least that's not too long from now.
  Also, last I checked, 'The Nocent part 2: Advent of the Scathing' has sold 50 copies worldwide!  This is only the first day of the promotion and it's sold over a third of what 'The Greater Number' sold in five days.  I'm so proud!

The Pig Was Paul

  I was just looking online earlier to find out if Slipknot has any plans to release a new album.  I was also curious as to what their plans are as to finding a new bassist ever since Paul Gray passed away in 2010.  They are working on demos for a new album, but have no plans to replace Paul.  They have an old member of the band playing bass for their live shows.  In case you didn't already know all this, that's what I was able to find out.
  Oh, and ever since 'The Greater Number' started its promotion on March 19, I've sold over 100 copies!  And that was just in America.  Worldwide, I've sold about 140!  In fact, it was such a successful promotion that I'm doing the same thing with my first book, 'The Nocent part 2: Advent of the Scathing'.  It will be available for free at amazon.com starting March 24 and continue the promotion through March 28.  You're welcome.

Hot Cakes

  I can't believe it.  Since I started my promotion on amazon.com, selling 'The Greater Number' for free yesterday, I've already sold 53 copies!  At the time of writing  this, it is the morning of the second day of the promotion.  This sale is continuing through March 23.  Imagine how many copies I will have sold by then!

Free Promotion

  When I enrolled my books in Kindle Select at amazon.com, I was given the option to promote them by putting them out for free for a limited time.  I just put 'The Greater Number' out for free from March 19-March 23.  I think this might gain some readers.  Most of the books in my Kindle library were free.  I asked amazon to list the books from cheapest to most expensive.  Then I just bought up all the free books.  Oh, and I downloaded a free Kindle app onto my laptop so now I can read the books in my library without having to buy a Kindle.  So anyway, I have updated my Facebook status to inform my friends about this free promotion.  I also tweeted it and now I'm blogging about it to reach the largest audience possible.

Re-Grows

  I just uploaded a re-vamped version of Chief Loh's song, 'Grows In Strength'.  I added some baseball sound effects during the lines, "Up to bat / batter up / now time to swing."  I also added some background vocals to both the verses and the chorus.  To me, the song just pops more now.  It's more complete and fun.

Reflection

  Something that's sorely lacking in my life is reflection.  I never take the time to just stop and think about how my day went, how my life's going, where I'd like to go in life, etc.  I do plenty of thinking and reading, but usually it's about outside stuff.  I don't focus on me, my thoughts, actions and deeds.  Self-reflection could help me reconsider mistakes I've made during the day.
  A big problem I have when faced with any sort of a decision is that I tend to go with the first thing that comes to mind.  That doesn't always end well.  If I give myself more than one option, I'll be able to make an intelligent choice based on my observations.  The only way I can get to a place in my mental state where I can come up with options is if I look back on my day and see if I could have done some things better.  Then I will know next time I'm faced with a similar situation another possible course of action.
  It's a disturbing pattern how often I victimize myself to situations because of the timing.  I don't make quick decisions well.  If I have some pre-conceived notions about various situations, I'll have them at my disposal for future reference.
  This isn't just about my day to day actions, but about my past as well.  If I recognize patterns that were instilled into me by my parents, I can see why I make certain choices in the ways that I make them, especially when I'm not making them consciously.  Rumination will make me more conscious of my moment to moment choices.  The eventual outcome will be a constant mindfulness of my actions which will hopefully lead to fewer mistakes.

Moving Toward

  As you may have read in my recent blog entries, I'm reading 'Conversations With God' by Neale Donald Walsch again.  Last night I read a part where Neale asks God how he can call forward a new world that's not filled with the problems of this world.  God said that he had to imagine a higher self and visualize the things this self would do and say in response to things around him.
  I think I've been going about things backwards.  I've been trying to hold in mind the fact that I am broken at all times.  God says that what you resist persists.  I've been calling forth my own brokenness because I've been so obsessed by it.  I should focus more on creating a higher self and making it real in my mind.  In this way, I'll be moving toward something.  It will be a goal to work for instead of an obstacle to avoid.  I will naturally move away from my obstacles if I am concentrating on moving toward something.
  This morning, I realized I had some fear in me.  Instead of thinking about getting the fear out of me, I chose to think of something I could do that I have confidence in.  I acknowledged my fear, didn't move away from it, but moved toward an activity with a successful outcome in mind.  In that way, the fear didn't go away, it just simply didn't exist any more.

Unloving

  'Conversations With God' by Neale Donald Walsch says that you cannot experience yourself as being loving until you have first experienced yourself as being not loving.  What this tells me is that I must own up to my faults.  Often I sugar coat them or try to downplay them.  I try to see myself as loving by seeing myself as not unloving.  I have it backwards.  That's why I have such trouble loving myself.  I have never truly experienced myself as unloving.  I have some excuse for every unloving deed I've ever done.  This will never get me to a place where I can know myself from the inside out.  I lie to myself when I turn a blind eye to my short-comings.  Once I have embraced my true nature, I can know myself well enough to make a choice as to whether I will be loving or unloving.  I can't make that choice if I don't even acknowledge what is unloving about the things I say or do in day to day situations.  It's like I'm blind, holding a bucket of red paint and thinking I'm painting my house green.

Spiritual Being

  It has come to my attention that I cannot become spiritually healthy until I can hold in my mind every moment of every day that I am spiritually broken.  I asked myself how anyone can hold anything in mind every moment of any day.  With that in mind, I started reading 'Conversations With God' by Neale Donald Walsch again.  One of the first things that is said in the book is about communicating with God and how he tries to get through to us.  He said that he uses feelings first.  Then he uses thought and experience.  The last thing he uses is words.  Words are the least effective purveyor of truth.  I asked myself, how can I hold my brokenness in mind at all times.  The answer came to me that I will only be able to when I care.  I asked myself, how do I start to care?  The answer came to me that I will only start to care when I care to.
  That's when it slowly started to dawn on me what it is that people care about.  Firemen will have fire prevention and firefighting on their minds all day, every day.  That is who they are and so that is what they care about and so that is what they think about.  In order to think about spiritual brokenness, I need to care about spiritual health.  In order to care about spiritual health, I need to be a spiritual person.
  I only view my world through thought and words.  I'm not usually in touch with my feelings.  I definitely don't pay attention to my experiences in a way that is beneficial.  If God is trying to communicate with me in many different ways, I need to listen to him in all those ways and not just a couple of them.  I need to explore my feelings about everything and truly open myself up to experiencing things with all of my being.  If all matter is just energy and God is energy, then all things are God.  He is trying to communicate with me through all things.  It's just a matter of if I'm listening or not.
  The Bible says to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  If I'm only loving him with my mind, then I can't be fully loving him.  I will be a spiritual being when I am feeding my spirit everything it's missing out on.  My spirit thirsts to experience everything fully.  That means not only my five physical senses, but the sixth sense and all my thoughts and feelings about my experiences.
  Even a baby is more in touch with their bodies than I am.  They cry when they're hungry, thirsty or uncomfortable in some way. I am missing out on so much of the world around me that I am denying myself the good things in life and allowing myself to continue living with the bad things in life.  Now, of course, I mean good and bad by my opinions on any given experience, not some generalization that's supposed to hold true for everyone.  I have given up fighting to have things that make me happy.  Where's my crying to be fed, so to speak?
  A big part of my problem is that I'm willing to do anything that's expected of me.  I say "yes" with my mouth, but as soon as I start to do something, you can see if my actions reflect an inner "no".  By this I mean, I am more likely to fail at any particular objective if I'm not putting my heart into it.  I will only do well at things I'm good at, care about or am confident in.  I need to know myself well enough to know what I'm good at, care about or am confident in or else I will never know why I fail at some things.  I need to find my inner "no".  If I can say "no" to the things that I don't desire to do, I will not just work in vain and feel like a disappointment to myself and to others.  Even so, with that being said, there might be things I'm not necessarily good at that I might choose to take on as a challenge.  I am much less likely to fail if I have confidence in myself even if I've never done something before.  My confidence should not come from my success, but my success should come from my confidence.

jtlyk

  When I'm texting or on IM, sometimes I don't know how to signify the end of a conversation.  I thought, maybe if I end my message with "oao" (over and out), it might get the point across.  What do you think?  Also, when I'm informing someone of something, I don't always like to say "fyi" (for your information), sometimes I use "jtlyk" (just to let you know).  If you like these, maybe you can start using them with your friends and family!