Reality is not necessarily REAL. How do you define reality? How do you know that you know reality? I'm pretty sure that reality is not one's opinions...because opinions come from intellect- and are often ego-based. Convincing other people of the need to see and believe what YOU believe is not reality, it's your conviction and drive to have others see you, i.e., your perception. Your reality is very much emotion-based, which means it's not always going to be completely in line with others who have different feelings. BTW, those other people are not wrong for having different feelings. The problem with the power of human emotions is that if your reality starts to differ from your peers, you might feel alienated and lonely, which no one wants. Then, the fear of ostracization will probably provoke you to join the opinions of the predominant group. No questions asked is the way to stay safe, yet the questions to be answered will remain there waiting for you to look at them. Your soul needs you to become a human being of the utmost self-expression of love. No one can determine your reality, it must come from within and be validated by making up your own mind. 

You pass on SO much inforation that you don't question. As a matter of fact, you have layers upon layers of beliefs that are cemented and are making/keeping your soul sick. Then, because of prolonged sickness, your perceptions are continuing to be limited. Your realit(ies) were gathered before you learned to question - you just BELIEVED. You validated and sought out continued confirmation - through the unconscious nature of your eyesight. You CANNOT poke holes in people's belief systems without trust so you can stop fighting with people to get them to SEE. No knowledge is irrefutable...TRUTH is. You cannot take away people's beliefs but you can share your own power by bringing people into healty, open conversations where they can be right and wrong, not simply parroting what others are saying. "Your" truth has holes because as soon as you say it's yours, it has bias. You never have to give anything up when you're open and loving. You practice love with your choice. Choice can be right or wrong, but it must be conscious. No one has to accept another's experience as proof because you think they "know more" as a person of an identity group. They can be "wrong" because they're biased too. Liberation comes from an energy that allows connection. By growing ourselves, we infuse our inner energy with more emotional intelligence and spirituality. 

Our lives are full of a lot of emotion these days. The way you feel can be validated by finding like people and communities who provide security, belonging or comfort. This is GOOD. Yet, these spaces of comfort can provide limited thinking and can enhance narrow minds, becoming a bubble because their purpose is to inflate a "safety zone." What happens when that bubble becomes destructive and you start to feel "apart from"? In other words, that bubble BURSTS. You may feel alone. HOW do you then figure out who you are or how to feel? If you're open, you can start to change your mind by finding a new space and new awareness of yourself. Awareness and action TOGETHER can help you express yourself in new ways. Maybe, then, you'll find new parts of yourself that you didn't know were there because you never questioned how you see things. Instead, you've always accepted others' opinions as your own.

A new perspective and experience will be created by questioning your decisions and experience. Question reality...it may not be real. Power comes from thinking for yourself after the bubble bursts. Making up your own mind is real freedom - the kind that CANNOT be taken away. 

Awareness, awareness, awareness. It's key and it's also not about you being aware of me, but me being aware of myself. What is it that awareness is supposed to do? Do we need more awareness when, in fact, there is more awareness than ever and things don't seem to be going away? It seems to me that the "awareness-building" media are creating more openings for more pleas for more awareness. But once I'm aware, what do I DO? Where does my awareness take me? Am I now qualified - because I understand more or am talking about it more - to help more people get more healthy? Does my awareness of something in the world help it become eradicated? Truth be told, is it possible that the problems that are plaguing us are not really being addressed? Is it likely that the problem is that these problems are multi-faceted...and EVEN SPIRITUAL in their essence?  The patterns in your thinking are conditioned by your experiences and the responses in your community to those experiences. Can it be that the solutions you were offered never really dived deep enough into what was happening in your thinking and emotions? Was what you learned missing something spiritual?

I'd like to propose that we need to increase spiritual health awareness instead of mental or emotional health awareness. What would happen in your life if you decided to seek a higher power instead of seeking another doctor or another pill? Solutions to human mental deficiencies and scary emotions can sometimes only be alleviated by something far greater and more deep than your own human understanding (or physiological solutions). If you decide never to explore this because of your pride and prejudice against God, you are missing out on a valuable and ongoing cathartic healing. It's more often about what's going on in your soul, not your head. The world is NOT responsible for how you feel, you are. Without a personal and autonomous purpose, feeling lost is automatic. Give time time. Open your mind. Start questioning the stupid shit that you think makes sense...

Your fulfillment of deep spiritual human needs can be compared to eating. We eat in gluttony and don't think about whether or not we're getting what we need. We "fill up" our well, but with things that leave us empty; we're not satisfied to our fullest human digestive state. When you eat empty calories, they fill up your stomach and you'll be satisfied momentarily, but it will trigger an addictive cycle of wanting more. Material fulfillment is like that - it's empty and fundamentally dissatisfying. Nothing is stored for later and nothing is balanced. You don't have enough of macronutrients, the pieces of nutrition that create full satiety. When you're not fulfilling your need for deep spiritual connection, you're forever hungry and you're living a half-life that is stressful and disconnected. Smooth, connected satiation is something you only dream about, staying hungry for another car, relationship or money that will scratch that itch. This is the root of fear and unhappiness where you can no longer give yourself the satisfaction of your desires. It is a chronic escapism of what IS. 

Why are you struggling so much? Your barrel/well that you keep trying to fill up with "stuff" has a hole in the bottom and you keep scraping for more of what you can't reach. The container that is YOU needs a balm for the loneliness that's been fueled by low self-esteem. Low self-esteem resides in your thinking and is waiting to tell you that you'll never fill the barrel and that you're still not enough. The stuff you've been taught to fill the barrel with is the vapid-who-you-think-you-are that rules your life...your job, where you live, who you're married to, what your kids look like. These "feathers" can never completely fill a barrel. The more you focus on them, the easier they float to the bottom. A foundation of true self-respect and self-esteem is the only way to fill the hole AND the well. The full well is who you're meant to be. That fullness ABSOLUTELY NEEDS CONNECTION! Don't let negativity and scarcity become darkness and feed your demons. Your life should be steeped in deeper consciousness, larger purpose and vision which will determine how you truly feel within your highest self. From there you'll see face to face what you fear and you'll surrender to a release that will bring the peace you crave. 

Sometimes I feel disappointed in what I see as weakness, and I'm not talking about expressing feelings, nor about strength. Sensitivity is human and far from weak. What makes me weak is what I do with what's happening with me and how I feel. When you don't address feelings by taking responsibility and owning what's happening to YOU from within YOU - you lack courage. No one is "making" you feel anything and believing so by assigning blame to others is a form of weakness. If your feelings cause another feeling of weakness, that may be because you haven't been present to these feelings before. Vulnerability is beautiful but when you start talking about having boundaries or working on self-care, you're probably assigning meaning to another and not REALLY being vulnerable. Just because you express your feelings you don't necessarily have a consciousness that is power because you're still waiting for responsibility to come from someone else. You'll never pinpoint how you can grow and become powerful when you're complacent and waiting for others to act. Courage is stepping up and not playing the game. "The Game" is you being obese with self - in your opinions, arrogance and the vapid nature of your weakness. Once you're weak and then you wait on the world to change, you're on your way to a slow death of unhealthy finger-pointing and attachments. You think you know what should happen and you're not acting on what you believe is right. Don't be an entitled idiot...aspire, be motivated, indulge in integrity, seek the highest love. The highest love is your spiritual nature. Stand in that nature and BE. 

Limiting beliefs and excuses put up roadblocks to your dreams. And our society reinforces these falsehoods all the time. Just look around at those living their dreams. They refuse to believe what people would say to keep them down or limited. People's masks are telling you that you can succeed, while showing you all the things you should be warned about the potholes that will stumble and harm you. The message is "keep yourself safe", "don't risk", "take it easy". AND if you think outside the box, you might be identified by people - even those closest to you that you've known all your life - may start to think you're crazy. But ARE you crazy, or have you been freed from pervasive social fears that have been ruling your life and keeping you stuck? Your main focus in life should be to cut ties to your limiting ideas. Once you are freed from this thinking, your path becomes a new game to play. Get excited about your life, about what you want to achieve. STOP listening to people who are afraid of you being "all that" Who DO you think you are? The answer should be Greatness...because that's who we ALL are. Your failure is seeds for success, as a freed and humble servant of life. 

How do you find answers? Do you automatically, when struggling or seeking, go within and negatively over-examine or do you quickly seek answers from others before any self-introspection? There are many self-help modalities built on dialogue, commonly known as shooting the shit. Education, also, is a form of trading ideas. No matter what the modality, these types of conversational self-help are a great catharsis because, of ourselves, we cannot fully find our own answers. When you have a problem, if you go to therapy or get coaching, for example, you're affording someone else the intention to get to know you and help you find YOUR OWN answers. The opportunity there, for me as a coach, is to get people to see themselves more clearly and honestly to open windows within them. However, if you - or any client - is not being honest, you cannot expect to find answers. The coach's job, in a therapy of words, is to allow a client to grow in their self-awareness through language, finding words and having free-flow conversation. There is a lightness, being, power and freedom for those who seek and talk with honesty and clarity. They find liberation through a sense of higher consciousness. This freedom affords a surrender that has more answers than one can find from self or any other PERSON. When you find the capacity for presence, you realize you know more than you thought you did. Your feelings now have clarity, meaning and purpose. You are alive. You are changing. THEN go change the world.

When situations present themselves and you don't like what you see, you probably want the easy way out - which is usually just to listen to others and follow along with the predominant messaging or what "they" tell you to do.. Yet, what will that net you in finding truth? What will you sacrifice in terms of your own confidence when you can't make up your own mind? When a larger group pushes an agenda, and you are in conflict, you'd be wise to go to the people you know whom you can ask "What do you think I should do?" and their response is "What do YOU think you should do?" The building blocks of self-esteem are created from ignoring those who want to tell you what to do. It will be HARD to find peace and clarity in the midst of people who yell and scream for fear that a person making up their own mind is dangerous. In this podcast, I look at Covid vaccination and social justice as two subjects around which I had deeper questions outside the "normal" scope of simple acceptance of what I was being told about how to think. The larger dialogues aren't always the best or most forward-thinking dialogues, I've found. But those questions I ask myself find me the right place to be truthful and helpful - even transformational - as I seek to change my world one conversation and one day at a time. These important conversations need the creation of unlimited potential for power and change.