Trust the process

Imae by Kim Klassen

When I first heard about minimalism, I immediately rejected it. The root word is partly to blame: minimal. It gives the impression of having to endure scarcity to the point of deprivation.

Living simply isn't about living under a rock somewhere and depriving yourself of the finer pleasures in life. It's about feeling satisfied, not deprived. About filling up, not emptying out. It's about surrounding yourself by things you love, good books, music, beautiful art. It's about peace of mind, living your life with purpose, without the screaming thoughts of what or who you SHOULD be.

Sometimes life is made simple by removing things, but sometimes it comes from adapting or adding in what you really need to live a good life.

Listen to your heart and trust the process - Simple living today is joyful, bright, poetic and mentally robust.

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Do NOT study poverty

Since belief is all important, it is important for you to guard your thoughts if you want to thrive, and as your beliefs will be shaped to a very great extent by the things you observe and think about, it is important that you should carefully govern to what you give your attention. And here free will comes into use, for it is by your will that you determine upon what things your attention shall be fixed.

If you want to become thrive, you must not make a study of poverty. Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites.

- Health is never to be attained by studying disease and thinking about disease;

- Righteousness is not to be promoted by studying sin and thinking about sin;

- and no one ever thrived by studying poverty and thinking about poverty.

Medicine as a science of disease has increased disease;

religion as a science of sin has promoted sin,

and economics as a study of poverty will fill the world with wretchedness and want.

Do not talk about poverty, do not investigate it, or concern yourself with it. Never mind what its causes are; you have nothing to do with them.

Do not read books or papers which give circumstantial accounts of the wretchedness of the tenement dwellers, of the horrors of child labor, and so on.

Do not read anything which fills your mind with gloomy images of want and suffering.

You cannot help the poor in the least by knowing about these things, and the widespread knowledge of them does not tend at all to do away with poverty.

What concerns you is to thrive. Do not spend your time in so-called charitable work or charity movements; most charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate.

I do not say that you should be hard-hearted or unkind and refuse to hear the cry of need, but you must not try to eradicate poverty in any of the conventional ways.

Ayn Rand said, “There is a great, basic contradiction in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was one of the first great teachers to proclaim the basic principle of individualism – the inviolate sanctity of man’s soul, and the salvation of one’s soul as one’s first concern and highest goal; this means – one’s ego and the integrity of one’s ego. But when it came to the next question, a code of ethics to observe for the salvation of one’s soul – (this means: what must one do in actual practice in order to save one’s soul?) – Jesus (or perhaps his interpreters) gave men a code of altruism, that is, a code which he told them that, in order to save one’s soul, one must love or help or live for others. This means, the subordination of one’s soul (or ego) to the wishes, desires, or needs of others, which means the subordination of one’s souls to the souls of others.

This is a contradiction that cannot be resolved. This is why men have never succeeded in applying Christianity in practice, while they have preached it in theory for 2,000 years. The reason of their failure was not men’s natural depravity or hypocrisy, which is the superficial (and vicious) explanation usually given. The reason is that a contradiction cannot be made to work.”

You cannot hold the mental image which is to make you thrive if you fill your mind with pictures of poverty and all its attendant ills. Poverty can be done away with, not by increasing the number of well-to-do people who think about poverty, but by increasing the number of poor people who purpose with faith to thrive.

The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two. But inspiration can cause them to rise out of their misery. If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can thrive. Prove it by thriving yourself.

Put poverty behind you, and put all that pertains to it behind you, and “make good.” Thrive. That is the best way you can help the poor.

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Having an open mind

There is a common misconception that taking risks is … well, risky. But the truth is that taking risks is no more risky than playing it safe, or maintaining the status quo. In fact, often by failing to innovate, make changes and move forward in different areas of our lives, we open ourselves up to the possibility of stagnation and falling behind.

And often our perceptions of reality do not match the truth of reality. For example, statistically speaking, you are far less likely to be injured in an airplane than in an automobile, by almost 100 to one. Cars are far more dangerous. Think about it. How many people do you personally know that have been injured or killed in a plane crash? Not in newspaper reports you’ve read, but people you actually know. Now how many people do you know who have been injured or killed in a car accident? Point made. Yet many people feel apprehensive about taking a plane trip, and these same people feel no apprehension whatsoever about a car ride. Their perceptions and fears do not match the reality of the situation. This happens in our lives more than we would care to realize.

Everyone talks about how important having an open mind is. But what they don’t say is how much having an open mind can affect your potential. A lot of opportunities pass us by because we’re stuck in a limited pattern of thinking, or we’re afraid to take a risk.

If there’s no actual real (or perceived) danger, take the risk. The worse that can happen is you’ll look silly. Having an open mind is the first step to reaching your potential, because it gives you the willingness to take risks. We’ll never be the best we can be by playing it safe.

As the saying goes: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be where you’ve always been.”

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"Smiling" and "Atheism"

The internet is so full of positive quotes, affirmations, inspiring articles and images and "good" information that it is easy to get positive feed-back in all areas and regularly raise the frequency of your vibration.

But the internet is just as full of negativity, full of ugly on-line fights, full of people pushing against one another and venting their anger for the world to see.

You know how, when you click on a link, and then you click on another and then another and eventually you're somewhere you never intended?

Well, that happened to me the other day. I was Googling "smiling", of all things, and through following links, I ended up at this FaceBook page link called "Fuck Jesus Christ and Fuck Christianity".  Seeing the title, I was intrigued and my curiosity got the better of me, so I popped over to have a look.

I have no problem with what religion someone follows, or whether they do or don't. Everybody is entitled to their opinion or beliefs. Even this page. And although there are many valid "truths" on the page, I do not understand why a viewpoint has to be put across with such anger and hatred. If you do not believe in a god, then you don't. It's your choice. It’s your right. But leave other people to have their choice, their belief, it's their right, it's their choice.

This page strikes me as the sort of thing that gives "atheists" a bad name, and probably one of the reasons why so many religious people find it difficult to "come out of the closet" and follow their own truth.

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Life after divorce

I am not divorced, have never been, although I have been through a seperation, but I do have a certain outlook on divorce and being single again - my favourite tag line is "Each and every one of us used to be single before marriage!" so what's the big deal? But this divorce thing can, and sometimes does, destroy so many lives - why?

Because how you view yourself becomes your reality.

The way you think and feel about living your life after divorce is mirrored in how you're living life right now. In a nutshell, your life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you expect will happen, will happen. You'll either live up or down, to your own expectations.

What are your expectations for your life after divorce?

I know, divorce hurts. Let's look at your new life this way, whatever you dwell on most forms the world around you. If you look for the negative, you can find negative circumstances and situations everywhere. Negative thinking becomes negative reality. When you close your eyes and think about the future - Do you picture yourself as successful, content and happy? When you think of your life five years from now, how does it look and feel? Do you see the future as an exciting adventure or something to dread and fear?

This time of emotional upheaval more than any other, is the time to dig deep and find your powerful and positive inner motivators. Inner motivators begin in your memory and imagination. When you use your imagination to picture positive and exciting outcomes, you are more willing to come out of your comfort zone and take the needed risks to make a new life reality. Your imagination creates your possibilities.

Have you tried visualizing an exciting, successful, happy and content future? If visualization is new to you, you may be sceptical about using "daydreaming" to create reality. You may be saying, "Reality is reality and wishing and hoping won't change anything." Think of visualizing as planting seeds of content and success in your imagination. These seeds grow into goals and the goals into reality.

As someone who has many friends who have been through divorce, I'm a big believer in the philosophy that a person is only limited by her/his own imagination and willingness to take positive action. Your mind will react positively to the emotional belief that something you desire is already reality. You are visualizing an ideal scenario, ignoring reality as it is at this moment. You will be using your mental energy to attract what you truly want into your life. Focus all your energy on the positives you want, not the negatives you don't want. Your mind will work very hard to make visualizations come true. Your nervous system tunes into your visualization. When visualizing your new ideal life, you begin to stimulate your mind to take action.

Taking the appropriate steps, everyday, will help make your self-empowered and rewarding new life after divorce a reality.

Do you see the future as an exciting adventure or something to dread and fear?

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Thinking men cannot be ruled

"The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive - a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence...

Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith....

The purpose of man's life... is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question?"
- Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

If more individuals today are religious sceptics than in centuries past, that is mainly because accumulated knowledge has inclined more people toward such doubt.

It would have been harder to be an atheist hundreds of years ago, when so many mysteries about the universe had not been answered. The scientific discoveries of the last few hundred years have filled in so many gaps that the idea of a Grand Designer with some kind of special affection for humans seems more implausible than ever to many.

Early childhood indoctrination by family, for example, is a key environmental factor that promotes religious beliefs. I mean, you might not have been a Christian if you were born into a Hindu or Buddhist family. And vice versa. If you had been born on an island where just your parents lived and they told you that a certain brick was god, you would have grown up believing that. Until your common sense kicked in.

But living in a close society as we humans do, prevailing social views that disapprove of open disbelief will often discourage serious exploration of secularity. In other words, the major environmental factor that promotes disbelief (and discourages belief) tends to be accumulated knowledge, whereas the most significant environmental factor in promoting belief (and discouraging disbelief) tends to be family and social indoctrination.

Religion, especially Christianity, has always been about control. Through the ages, the control the Church had over the people was total. Peasants worked for free on Church land. They paid 10% of what they earned in a year to the Church (a practice which still continues today). A failure to pay taxes, so the peasants were told by the Church, would lead to their souls going to Hell after they had died. You also had to pay for baptisms (if you were not baptised you could not go to Heaven when you died), marriages (there were no couples living together in Medieval times as the Church taught that this equaled sin) and burials - you had to be buried on holy land if your soul was to get to heaven. Whichever way you looked, the Church received money. The Church also did not have to pay taxes. This saved them a vast sum of money and the church just kept on getting wealthier and more powerful. Not something to be easily given up without a struggle.

Spirituality means something different to everyone. For some, it's about participating in organized religion: going to church, synagogue, a mosque, etc. For others, it's more personal: Some people get in touch with their spiritual side through private prayer, yoga, meditation, quiet reflection, or even long walks. Visiting Nature is as close to any god as you can get, her awesomeness is irrefutable and we could take many lessons on spirituality from her.

It seems that, once we believe in something, we will try to explain away anything that conflicts with it. Humans can't help but ask big questions—the instinct seems wired in our minds.

"If the explosion of knowledge in recent centuries has made the idea of disbelief more compelling, it would seem that the long-term trend toward secularity, even if slow, is likely to continue. In fact, it is remarkable that secularity has spread so impressively even though powerful forces have tried to shape the environment against it."

- Psychology today

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De-program yourself from mass brainwashing

Society has undergone a mass brainwashing and it is time for us to de-program ourselves in order to be completely immersed in the evolution of consciousness. Religion has been the longest running form of mind control on the planet and has served to not only keep us separated, but to depopulate the world through numerous wars, inquisitions and crusades in the name of "God".

What religion does not teach us is that we are powerful, spiritual beings without them.

The real truth is that the bible is just a story to keep you living in subservience, control and conformity, the same template as every government. Ask lots of questions and go within for answers. It is time to take control of your own life instead of giving your energy and power away to others.

When you find religion, you find money as these two tenets in life are married to one another. Within these two entities, you'll also find their bastard stepchild, government, as all 3 are perpetually tied to each other. Ask yourself, "If there was no such thing as money, then what would you be doing with your life?" This will give you an idea of what your life purpose should be if you were not influenced by the almighty dollar and religion.

While money can simply be viewed as another form of energy, neither positive or negative, it also takes us away from our true, natural selves along with what is truly important in our lives.

Along with religion, TV is one of the biggest mind control venues out there. How many times have you ever felt good after watching the news? Do you enjoy being (literally) programmed into what you should eat, wear, drink, etc... through the commercials?

From birth, virtually all of us have been brainwashed through various outlets that encourage materialism, ego, subservience, control and conformity. As children, the brainwashing begins in the church when we are baptized. Many parents do not question baptism or the origins of it and blindly have their children baptized as the church welcomes them into the community in the name of Jesus Christ. The Jesus story, alone, isn’t questioned by enough Christians who blindly believe anything they are told in the name of “faith”.

I’d like to believe there is a Santa Claus and an Easter Bunny, too. These holidays both have Pagan origins, yet Christians never question these either and celebrate them with abandon. It’s all part of the lie propagated to us by religion.

Many Christians will argue that their church does good things for others while the bible provides good morals and values. But the truth is, you don’t need a church to do good things for others or a bible to be a morally sound person.

Additionally, the bible also teaches hatred and fear such as when God allegedly kills everyone with the “Great Flood”, except Noah and his family. These are the horror stories our children learn in Sunday school and that we read to them at night. Not only that, but the messages are often convoluted and ambiguous. What kind of message are we sending our children?

While the bible provides nice parables to learn from, they are not necessary, especially with all of the other negative content provided by religion.
~ Some extracts from "How to deprogram yourself"

Why would a sensible, intelligent human being not question religion? We are a naturally inquisitive species; we query whether there are aliens or not, we question evolution, we investigate the Universe. Why on earth would we blindly follow a certain religion in such blind faith? It is purely through brainwashing. Tell somebody something for long enough and they surely will start to believe it.

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Don't meet resistance with resistance

Why is receiving feedback on our beliefs so challenging? Whenever any one of us receives feedback that is tainted with criticism or judgment, we create a situation that requires defending ourselves.

Don't worry about what other people think of you. Other people are outside your control, and if you can't get past worrying about your own image, you can't live free. You can't please everyone; thinking that you can will leave you alienated and disappointed, so you shouldn't try.

Seek to overcome defensiveness. First, defensiveness puts us in a closed-minded, self-protective mode. Defensiveness creates a climate of contention. It makes it impossible to have a real, two-way conversation about an issue.

The more self-acceptance we have, the easier it is to hear feedback, because we can relax into ourselves and receive it as information rather than confirmation that there is something wrong with us.

Once you received the feedback and have listened carefully to what was said, it’s time to decide what you want to do with it. The first thing is to overcome any self-judgements. You don't owe anybody any explanation or excuse for who you are or what you believe in.

Even in your rightness about a subject, when you try to push your rightness toward another who disagrees, no matter how right you are, it causes more pushing against.

If you don't meet resistance with resistance, it dissipates dramatically. It just softens. Try it! Next time somebody says to you, "I'm right, and you're wrong," say, "Pfftt, you're right. You are right. You're right." And mean it. In other words, don't mock them. Don't be sarcastic. "You're right." And they are. They are quite entitled to their belief and if it's right for them, it's right.

Everyone thinks they're right. So, the question isn't who's right or who's wrong. The question is, who is most in alignment with their Source? And who is the most allowing? And whose life is really going the best, most of the time?

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