Thankful.
My friends.
My activities.
My ideas.
My reality.
My comforts.
My awareness.
My stamina.
My strengths.
My understanding.
Truth.
My truth.
My guidance.
My direction.
My behavior.
My selfishness.
My selflessness.
My lessons.
My discoveries.
My adventure.
My stories.
My relationships.
My patience.
My reflection.
My forgiveness.
My loyalty.
My pursuit.
My concentration.
My contradictions.
My assumptions.
My presence.
My niche.
My questioning.
My beginning.
My repeating.
My determination.
My tempo.
My speed.
My lack.
My greed.
My darkness.
My lightness.
My self-consciousness.
My self confidence.
My trust.
My righteousness.
My abundance.
My need.
My growth.
My curiosity.
My questioning.
My positivity.
My reliability.
My excuses.
My dependence.
My independence.
My nurturing.
My compassion.
My laughter.
My ease.

Balance & Grace

With change comes great challenge.  At some point in life everything can be turned upside down and you can be left wondering how it all unravelled.  Then follows tears, regret and possibly guilt, but what stands firm is always truth.  If you peel everything away that you have convinced yourself in your mind to be true and dismiss the lies that kept your illusion fueled, only honesty remains.  How can you really carry anger, sadness or the illusion of being happy when all it ever was created to do was be an excuse, a way to cope or stay in the same place with no chance of progressing forward?  The part we play in life and the energy we bring on to others is vital to our interactions, to the balance practiced in a dance with life. It cannot be rushed or made exaggerated, it simply is. With the help and support of open minded and aware people whom you surround yourself with it's easy to practice this balance, but doesn't always happen.  Why lie to yourself? Where does it get you but the long way around? You will always come back to the start if your intentions are to prove something greater in order to convince others of your supposed truth, or really when it comes down to it to just convince yourself.  It is how we build relationships that come from strength in trust and honesty, lasting longer than on a false hope that we are those things already.  You either are or you're not.  There is no room left to be overabundant in our declaration of sanity or self righteousness, it is quieter than the roar that follows that. It is so powerful that it actually shifts  you forward in life and unfortunately at times it causes you to move on from people in your lives.  This theme is constant in my life and it takes on many forms.  For years in adolesence I thought if I shout loud enough, make enough of a grand gesture it can dominate any truth that I am avoiding,  any reality that when faced proved to be too difficult, so I just smothered it with dishonesty in order to "protect" myself. I led myself the long way around to protect my fears when at the end of the day, I was just expanding negative energy onto myself.  I walked away from situations with a load to carry.  How can you navigate yourself with a fogged mind? How can you expect to have a strong base if you are constantly swatting at the sky grasping for something to cling to that will keep you steady? For me, it starts at my center, with me looking inside and peeling all the layers away.  All of that regret, fear, tears, everything that was keeping me from seeing in the dark, was burned away by the illumination of honesty and truth within myself first. It started with me.   Nothing more, nothing less, just is what it is.  Once I accepted that I wanted to chose to live my life with integrity, it was only part of the battle, but significant non the less considering we will see ourselves thru to the end of this life.   I was honest in my actions with others and could proudly say I handled  things in a way where I let go of childish behaviors and let myself be completely vulnerable and honest. I walked away from relationships and I was proud that I never compromised my integrity.  But that wasn't the only lesson that I had to learn, that word was much fuller than I was aware of.   I put myself in a lot of unhealthy situations to which in turn didn't always just affect me directly but others outside of it as well.  Strangers, close friends, family, relationships, I'm sure I affected everything I came across with my inability to see the truth.  I was living life under a false pretense of what I hoped things were or what I hoped they would be, not the truth of what state life actually was in. I was aware of my projections on to others, but was closed off from awareness of what they projected on to me.   Thats where it gets tricky, you can start with yourself, but that doesn't mean you are protected from the lies and illusions lived by others.   That kind of energy can be very powerful in a negative way when you project it.  Time, balance and the practice of honesty have pulled me out of some difficult situations and rather quickly too.  So for years I was convincing myself of the lies I had come to believe as true, and then it just stopped. I stopped living with the fear of protecting myself with all this armor I needed to have and just saw the situation for what it was.  I still experienced emotions of sadness and loss, but the clarity I gained came fast and was more powerful toward such a positive shift  in my life that it was  not nearly as intense. After all, I would just be fooling myself into feeling bad about something that truly never existed.   At times I am blindly practicing these things, but every so often  I reach a point to see now just how far I have come.  It has been on many occasions recently, but one I can speak of respectfully.  I was summoned to jury duty yesterday and what a better platform for the truth to be spoken.  I was called to sit in the jurors box with 14 others and give my answers from a laminated sheet of pre-typed questions. I am not a public speaker, I have been recently asked by a friend to join him in an improve class, it's just not the platform I work best from, writing is.  But, I had no choice in the matter and had to be completely honest, speak my own truth and answer personal questions based off my own code of ethics, values and morals.  It would have been easy and believe me before this turn of events in my life I may have just sat there and nodded along in agreement just to avoid my fear of having 60 people stare at me in my most honest form, but something shifted again.  My voice trembled and I struggled to find the words that I could have easily written down if given a choice, but with all that fear aside knowing how powerful it can be when I choose it, I spoke my honest truth.  Of course the bonus of that was not being selected as a juror after the lawyers continued to cross examine me to question if my ideals could be put aside for sake of the law, but I was only one of three other people from my group to vocalize their stance.  I've never felt more connected to two strangers so instantly in my life and it made me think, wow what would this world be like if we would just stop letting  lies fuel this false sense of protection we believe it gives us.  It carries across all aspects of your life, your interactions, your conflicts, your struggles, all of it comes back to being honest with yourself first.   It's all practice though and it is never easy, but moments of pure honest clarity like that can be fuel toward positive energy and moving life forward.  It doesn't have frills or declarations or profound words, or a level in life that needs to be rushed into in order to protect yourself from pain,  those are all easy to see thru.   It is simply reaping the benefits of balanced energy and grace that being honest carries into our lives when we radiate the truth. 

"With a clear mind you can finally see it all"  - T.G. 

 a dear confidant and inspiring friend

A Bronx Tale and a documentary on Biggie that had me bobbing to the beat...good Sunday