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!

Galaxy Amigos

  The other day, the movie, 'The Three Amigos' was playing on TV.  I love that movie, but I hadn't seen it in years.  I noticed that it has the exact same plot as 'Galaxy Quest', another favorite of mine.  A group of actors find themselves in a real-life situation that mirrors plots from their careers.  They must then become real heroes to save some helpless people from some ruthless bad guys.  They use solutions that they had used in their films to conquer their foes.  There's a scene in which Martin Short's character gives almost a verbatim speech about "What do we have to go back to in our pathetic lives?" just like Tim Allen's speech.  There is also even a scene in each movie in which the actors have to work out a way of signaling each other with a bird call, which goes wrong.  I love both movies and each is relevant in its own way, I just never noticed the similarities before.