At first, this gathering and shaping may be a mostly unconscious act, thus the people we believe ourselves to be are really a reflection of how others perceive us combined with how self aware we are. If we do not grow in self awareness, the shape that manifests will become more and more fixed as the gathering and shaping becomes defined by comfort. This form can be heavily influenced by others in our lives, as we develop habits that are the “norm” for the environment we are raised in. Eventually, the shape becomes rigid, and yesterday defines tomorrow. Essentially our now becomes an extension of the past, and the yet to be loses its newness. The future shifts from the free realm of possibility to the rather closed land of expectation.

For some, this is enough. This kind of living is safe; comfortable. No need to change what seems to work, even if others define the limits of life for us. We do not need to face fears, because we already know what to expect. No need to question; no need to seek alternatives that may shift our defined shape into something more pleasing and desirable for ourselves. I am comfortable with the way things are. If others are not, clearly they are not doing things right. If they just emulate my shape, they too will be comfortable.

This way leads to stagnation. Essentially, the future ceases to exist.

Life is DEFINED by change. A life affirming future REQUIRES change. But this can only happen by choice. If any part of us wants to improve our future, we must first step out of the past and learn to appreciate NOW. The past has happened. We cannot change that. But we CAN change how much we let it influence the shape of ourselves. Do we want to be a fixed piece, nothing more than a statue ultimately shaped by past efforts? Or do we want to be a constantly evolving work of art, growing in strength and beauty, returning the yet to be to one of surprise and wonder?

Living now allows this to happen. CHOOSING how we live TODAY means the past does not decide today OR tomorrow. Now decides tomorrow. And tomorrow we get to choose again. This is how we return the future to the realm of possibility.

Appreciate the past. Learn from the past. But let the past go and live now. Choose who we are today and tomorrow we have created a new past to appreciate and learn from. In the process, we open up the possibilities for tomorrow. The future become an ongoing choice based on now, instead of a forgone conclusion based on yesterday.

Choose your future.

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That particular concept means nothing to me. I never thought of January 1st as being the beginning of anything other than an arbitrary month in a calendar made by man. To me the new year does not start until spring. Winter is the end of the cycle.

Yet this supposed beginning has been ingrained in our social consciousness for a couple of thousand years now, so I can’t just ignore it completely. When I was younger it was just another excuse to party. Those who embrace the idea of this being a beginning will talk about setting new goals and starting new paths. Often talk is as far as they get. Or some will jump into their new direction with focus and energy, but after a short period the realities of life and the difficulties of change will kick in, and everything reverts to the way it was before. Some may succeed in creating the change they seek.

The process is different for everyone.

I used to toy with the concept of New Year’s resolutions, but they never really stuck for me. My difficulty is that I am too now oriented. I am not really goal driven. This is not to say that I do no seek to improve myself, or change those aspects of self that no longer serve the path I am on. Rather it a choice of the moment. I don’t think in terms of “this year”. My focus is “this moment in time” which might extend as far as “today”.

Recently my energy has been on the negative side. Much is happening in my life and the world at large that does not resonate with me … or at least the me that I want to be. It is so easy to blame this negativity on outside events, because frankly humanity is on the cusp of a momentous decision on the ultimate path our communal soul will follow. But the reality is a negative reaction to what is going on outside us is a choice … even if not always a conscious one. The rest of the world is going to do what the rest of the world is going to do. WE can only change our own choices, which include how we react to what the rest of the world is doing. The is a fundamental truth.

It is also a truth that is easy to forget.

Every moment has the potential to start fresh. If the path we are on is not working for us, change direction. It is truly the choice of a moment. In practical terms, this might be a little more of a challenge. Changing direction mid-step could have unintended consequences. However, we are built in such a way that we reset every morning. Thus EVERY day is an opportunity for a fresh start.

So instead of a New Year’s resolution, I am setting a New Day’s resolution. Today’s resolution was inspired by the rising sun. For no matter how bad things may seem. the sun continues to rise every morning, even if we cannot always see it.

This morning it was quite visible to me.

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“Huh?” is not an unreasonable response.

Just do it. Don’t worry about art. Get yourself a piece of paper (which itself might be a challenge for some in this digital age) and draw yourself a rabbit hole. Make it big enough to put some words in.

Done? Great. Look at your rabbit hole and write down the first thing that pops in your mind. Maybe it’s a word, maybe its a phrase. Don’t think too much, just let it appear.

And so an adventure begins …

My rabbit hole

The path I followed:

• The word ‘asteroids’ randomly appears in my mind.
• “What a funny sounding word,” I think. Immediate perverse mind connection: Asteroids -> hemorrhoids
• “Shouldn’t ‘hem’ be ‘ass’?” I think. Shake my head in bemusement at my own thought processes.
• Look up the etymology of ‘asteroid’ …
  aster = star
• Look up the meaning of ‘hem’ There are a couple of meanings. The one that gets my attention:
  hem = restrict
• Restrict -> lock -> hemlock
• Bring back aster. Asterlock. No. Starlock.
• Search ‘starlock’.
• Turns out ‘Starlock’ is a brand of power tools.
• Search for videos about power tools …
  How to’s. A song. Kids with Power tools. CRAZY adults with power tools.
• Humans with power tools -> human power tools -> human power ->

Self empowerment

Deep in MY rabbit hole I found the concept of self empowerment, and that is where I stopped. Sometimes, the best way to get where you want to go is to head nowhere in particular. This is a particularly strong theme in my life and one I have often explored before.

Where does YOUR rabbit hole take YOU?

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Perhaps I have it backwards, I am living the life I should,
to allow all these other mes to be the mes they would.

Perhaps my dreams are alternate mes, the mes of other choices;
the dreams piercing the veil that separates me from my other voices.

Does the powerless me, the purposeless me, the me that has grown resigned,
allow the Freedom Fighter me to pursue the future that I seek to find?

Or maybe the sad me, the confused me, the me that despairs for humanity,
allows the vibrant, optimistic me help others return to sanity?

Are there many mes in a multiverse greatly varied and wide,
with me the counterbalance here on the other side?

And the biggest question I have of the mes I so often see,
“Do the rest of you, my other selves, also dream of me?”

The post Alternity first appeared on thrumyeyes.

Change is essential to our perception of reality.

I have never expressed the idea in quite that way, but this is a concept I often share. Change provides the contrast that allows us to differentiate between now and then. It provides a template for our understanding of improvement (or its lack). Without change, we cannot truly learn … or even understand … ANYTHING, simply because the very act of learning and understanding IS change. Change is inherent in the very definitions of time; life; existence … basically all the core concepts that define reality.

Without change, everything simply stops.

Recently, I have found myself exploring both extremes I mentioned above. I have both been denying much that is changing around me; WITHIN me. I have also been fighting against it. Both are not norms for me, but that in itself is one of the changes I face. Where once I thrived on frequent change, I now see more clearly the value of a certain level of constancy as well. I look back at my life, much of it shared by means of my creative endeavors, and I both see how much I have changed, and how much I have NOT. The very world around me has drastically changed even as it remains the same. Part of that is the essence of change itself, part of that is my perceptions of the world change as I do. Thus I become more and more human, yet never felt so distant from the rest of humanity.

And only I can change ANY of that.

Taking part in the challenge this year has reminded me of all that I have just rambled on about. I needed to remember that change is inevitable. I also needed the reminder that I have very much input in what changes FOR ME, and what does not. For that matter, I am the ONLY one who can choose those changes for myself. By abdicating from life, I am giving away this fundamental right and essentially casting myself adrift in the flow of time. In many ways, I am the same me I was as a child … I just understand THAT me so much better now. In other ways, I have grown so far beyond that child that I no longer recognize him in me. This is neither right nor wrong … just the way things are. I recognize the “flaws” in me that have shaped my path through life. More importantly, I recognize that they are only “flaws” if I choose to see them as flaws. I am, and always will be, me and the only change that I require of myself it to let myself be the best me I can be.

So the very short answer to the questions I posed: I would not change anything. I would continue to be me, which itself is a constantly changing concept, and allow me to take me where I will go. For no matter how much we might change, we are still we. It is like the flow of water in a river. The water is ever changing, but the river remains a river. And even if that river dries up to be a mere creek, or disappears entirely, the river that was is still the river that was. I will be the me that is, even as I am still the me that was. I will continue to create because being a creator is how I have defined myself. Whether or not the rest of the universe even notices my contribution is immaterial, because I was, I am, and I will be for a bit longer, and this simple reality is one that is immune to change.

I have no idea what to expect from the future. I cannot bemoan the loss of the past, because it is not lost. I can only continue to create my present. The rest will fall in place on its own.

The above image is a digital expression of what I have just written. It is my own creation, emulating the wonder that is inherent in nature. It is far from perfect, yet still has its own beauty. The me that was has become the me that is through learning the skills necessary to make this image, and I will continue to learn and change into the me that will be (with future creation). The image well portrays changelessly changing, in the form of flowing water. Thus I change as I remain the same

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I am ending at the beginning.

This is the cyclical nature of the mysterious thing we call life. Nothing ever truly ends. It just transitions. And while from our own small perspective, we might see a beginning and an end, we are just continuing a story that may have no ending … or beginning. The vastness of existence is not really an uncountable number of stories. It is rather ONE story with uncountable chapters in it. Each of us represents the smallest part of that story. I am not sure we even qualify as a chapter. We are more like a few sentences from an (extremely) small section of a chapter.

Even as I call this an ending I am about to begin another word in the few sentences that are me. I do not even know yet what that word may be, for all too often the word does not become apparent until it manifests. Thus I will not know what I have begun until I have finished. I might be able to choose a letter or two, but even that is not guaranteed. I end, I begin, I begin, I end. Sometimes I end before I begin, and there are also those times that I begin before I end. The whirlwind of letters forms into words, becoming sentences that help move the story along. But those few sentences will really give little information about the Grand Story; it’s only a few sentences after all.

The odd thing about this Grand Story (maybe one of the odd things would be more accurate) is that many sentences are being written, and read, at the same time. Thus whole chapters of the Story might appear to be one garbled sentence, or even a simple word. Maybe even a letter. Part of the joy of being in this story is learning how to read it. There is also joy in learning how to write our part of it, especially if we all manage to write our sentences into a harmonious whole.

I am about to end this little ramble on endings and beginnings. Whether this is truly an ending or a beginning is really a matter of perspective. Maybe it is really the middle. But for this moment in time I do know what letter I am working with. Here’s to the letter A.

THE END.

or

THE BEGINNING.

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… ENERGY.

Lo and behold, irony gives me my E post.

Energy is, quite literally, what makes the universe go round. It is the basis of … well … everything. All that we perceive started as energy, and will eventually return to being energy, even if a different form. The very act of perceiving requires energy. Energy is the substance of interactions between living beings. For that matter, it is the substance of interactions between non living entities as well.  Face it, without energy, time does not pass, and existence simply ceases.

Energy takes many forms, some of them more clearly defined than others. It is the central focus of scientific study. Physics and chemistry are essentially the study of energy in all its forms. Biology explores those forms of energy we call life. Even social sciences are about energy, for communications are also a form of energy. Our emotional relationships; our social hierarchy; even our personal psychology … all are forms of energy exchange.

Based on all this, it would appear that having a lack of energy is a rather a serious matter.

Of course what is meant by the phrase “lack of energy” is completely a matter of the specifics of the situation. Not to worry, put a little energy into thinking about it, and the phrase will make perfect sense. Even as I write this little rambling ode to energy, energy is pouring forth. There is the energy used to think my thoughts; the energy used in typing; the energy that converts and stores the ideas on my machine; the energy that sends it across the world is a flash; the energy of others reading and understanding … the list is endless. One can even sense my mood by the energy that seeps into the words themselves. And once more some irony: even as the energy of forming ideas that are being shared here starts to dwindle, my personal energy has risen. Just in time to go to bed of course.

So ends my E post. rather energetically, it seem.

The post Energy first appeared on thrumyeyes.

There are oh so many aspects of our social culture that I could discuss with this concept in mind, but in honor of the letter Q (for my Z to A challenge) I am going to focus specifically on the idea of quality vs quantity. Essentially, in our society we are trained from birth that more is better. We give social superiority to those who have more “things”, while those who “own” the least become pariah. To me, this is utter nonsense. I find it a completely selfish way at looking at the world. Yet our whole social structure, our economy, even our morality is entirely based on this construct. It has become so prevalent that we measure everything by quantity, often forgetting that quality is even an issue. The whole idea of social networking is designed around the number of followers one has, despite the fact that the only connection with these followers maybe a specific line of thought and the app used. Marketing targets as many people as it can, with the hope that given enough viewers, a few will buy into the mind games, making it all worthwhile.

We are even trained to believe that we must continuously increase the population, yet we lack the resource management to deal with the population we already have. We measure the health of our economy by the number of jobs available, seeing continuous population growth as a way of increasing the workforce, when many of those jobs only exist because we so measure the economy and we already have more people than jobs. We are convinced we need to constantly have new versions of things, without providing a way to get rid of all the “old” perfectly functional things. We have so many choices to make that choosing itself becomes an issue of mental health. All this because “more is better”.

Now I am not going to claim that quantity is NEVER preferable. There are many instances when the more of something the better the situation. But to me, in the most important issues we face in life, taking the time and effort to obtain quality is more satisfying and efficient than having a constantly growing number of ineffective solutions. Don’t repeatedly duck tape when fixing it right once will do the trick. Don’t buy poorly made products over and over when a well made one will last a long time. Don’t pursue thousands of “friends” who really offer us nothing when one close companionship can provide all that we need. Having lots of money; followers; fame; children; moral limits; years; things does NOT make one a better person. Nor does it make one a worse person. Having a quality life is dependent on HOW we live, not HOW MUCH we have. Live well, treat others well, and we are living a good life. This is true whether we have a lot of whatever or nothing at all.

At least this is true in MY view of the world.

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Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.

Whether a decision is potentially life altering, or as simple as what one’s favorite color is, everyone has an answer for you. And all to often, they will express that answer, even if you did not ask the question. Too many people have this need for their voice to be heard … no matter what it may say. They will gladly whisper; shout; sing; cry or simply say exactly what your choices should be. It does not matter that you did not seek their advice, they will share it anyway. It has become even easier in this age of digital communications. Someone does not even have to be physically near you for their voice to be heard. There are sometimes so many voices intent on being heard that one cannot hear any single one.

Cacophony reigns.

So how do we know which voices to listen to, and which to ignore? How do we know what choices to make when there are often so many voiced? Those who have he greatest influence in our lives will also have the loudest voices. We may even hear them speaking to us in our own thoughts; voices inside our head, directing, questioning.

How do we silence the cacophony?

Don’t worry, there are many voices willing to answer that question as well. For the moment lets focus on MY voice, the one speaking right now. I make no claim to special wisdom. Nor do I claim to be right or wrong. But I will offer an answer that works for me; and answer that to me seems wise and right, and maybe in this one instance my voice is the one to hear.

It seems to me that there is in truth only ONE voice that we all need to heed. There is only one voice that has the answers to life’s questions relevant to each of us. This voice knows the choices we each need to make; even the questions we each need to ask. We would find many of life’s trials so much easier if we simply listened to this one voice.

Unfortunately, the cacophony is such that many of us can’t even hear it.

Which voice is this? It is the still, small voice within each of us. It always knows the right thing to say, and will answer any question that may arise, if we can simply learn to hear it. That is the challenge we all face. We must learn to reach beyond all the other voices, no matter how much attention they demand of us, and simply listen to that quiet, peaceful voice of reason within. Call it the voice of the soul; call it instinct; call it the voice of divinity. However we view it, it is there for each of us. It is the voice we hear when all else is silent around us. It is the voice that sings to us when we feel joy; the voice that comforts us when we feel sorrow. It is the voice we hear when we slip into that realm between sleep and wakefulness. It is the voice that resonates deep within.

Still the cacophony. Find your inner voice. That way lies true peace.

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Windows are the eyes of the soul.

Think about it. We can see into the soul through the eyes. Similarly, the soul can see out, again through the eyes. That is exactly how a window works. This has symbolic significance, but can also be translated directly into practical example. Since today I am being driven by the letter W in my Z to A challenge, I am choosing to show an appreciation for windows and the roles they play in our lives. My creativity takes many forms other than writing, so today’s post has a more visual bent. Enjoy!

Windows allow us to appreciate the world while at the same time protecting us from the potential dangers. They come in all shapes and sizes. Through them we can share beautiful moments, or maybe learn a little history. They can allow us to portray our curiosity or longings, while at the same time keeping us in our safe zones. They can help lighten the dark; and provide comfort when needed. They are essentially a gateway to the land of What-if, and sometimes we may even be able to pass through them to visit in person. Many of us take such things for granted, so today I ask those who visit to step back and appreciate something that is both simple and profound. This is how we truly learn what life has to offer!

All these photos are mine. If you enjoy them, and would like to see more, please visit my photo part of my website. My choices for camera subjects are as varied as my writing!

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