Category: Personal Growth

Categories
Personal Growth Social Evolution

What is Abundance?

For some people, abundance is having as much resources as you can so they will be available when you need them.

Alternatively, abundance is having the resources you need as you need them.

The first version describes western civilization today, where it is normal to claim as much resources/money as you can. In a finite resourced world, abundance for some translates into scarcity for most people.

The second version is practiced in many indigenous communities, by hunter-gatherer communities of antiquity, and by most of us when we share a meal with our family and friends. In a finite resourced world, abundance for some translates into abundance for all.

Our Earth provides an abundance of resources, use what you need and leave the remainder for the rest of us.

Categories
Personal Growth

Letting Go of the How

What is your heart’s desire? Have you forgotten?

I understand.

We live in a time where our dreams have been reduced to fairy tales completely untethered from the reality of our lives.

And yet dream we must, because there has to be more to life than the white noise on our TV screens.

Now what?

While the audacity of my dream makes me feel uncomfortable, there is real value in remembering why I conjured this dream in the first place.

Here lies the remnants of my sense of purpose.

When I unpack my dream, I notice it involved the thing I most wanted to do without considering anything else.

No thoughts about money, or risk of failure, or even what my friends and family would think.

I realize I still want my dream.

Now that I am really thinking about it, I can’t help but consider whether I can make this happen. Is it really possible?

Yes!

Then reality sets in.

I still have bills to pay, and responsibilities I can’t simply abandon.

And yet my dream is possible.

As I consider the wisdom of my life’s successes, I realize even my best laid plans rarely worked as I intended. On those rare occasions where I achieved my goal, my route was far more opportunistic than I ever anticipated.

I intend to make my dream come true.

And the thing that gives me confidence is choosing to let go of how I will do it.

Letting go of the How is a super power because it frees me to see all the possibilities.

Like a running back weaving through multiple defenders, I will seize every opportunity life offers to make my dream a reality.

Categories
Personal Growth Philosophy Social Evolution Spirituality

The Importance of Knowing Thyself

One truth I have come to realize is the prerequisite for personal fulfillment is to know thyself. As I have immersed in my personal exploration, I find the journey can be expressed as follows:

Who Am I? —> What Am I? —–> Why Am I?

Who Am I?

Who I am is how I and the world see me.

I am a human, biologically male, and descendant of Panamanian & African American lineage.

I was born 58 years ago in the Bronx, NY, which makes me an American.

I am college educated, a military veteran, who built a 25-year career in business banking but now works in Climate Risk Management and Sustainability.

I voted democratic for twenty years, republican for 5 years, and independent ever since.

I could go on but by now I hope you see the pattern.

Who I am shows only the uniforms I wear. 

Who I am is merely the upper layers of my being. To understand more, I must explore how I exist.

To exist, I need oxygen to breathe, water to drink, nutrient food to eat, clothes & shelter to protect my body from extreme weather, and so much more. Yet, I do not produce what I need to exist. Therefore, I exist as part of a greater reality.

How did I come to exist? How do I function as part of this greater reality?

I came to exist because my parents chose to have sex, producing a fertile egg that set off an energetic chain reaction of cell reproduction, which empowers me my whole life until the energy leaves my body at death. 

The thread that connects how I came to exist with how I live my life is Energy.

What Am I?

I am Energy having a human experience.

As a human, I am learning what it feels like to be mortal. 

This is important because Energy is immortal, therefore has no understanding of mortality.

What does Energy do? How does Energy function?

Energy flows until it collides with matter. 

When Energy collides with matter, the matter changes to something else. This change is called Creation.

The power revealed by my human experience is we are capable of directing energy.

I exercise my power through the choices I make. 

Accordingly, the reality of my human experience is defined by the myriad of choices made by all the participants in my life’s journey.

Why Am I?

As an energetic being having a human experience, I am empowered to direct energy to co-create the reality in which I live. 

Therefore, the ultimate Why I Am is to decide what reality do I want to co-create.

Categories
Personal Growth Politics

Anatomy of the Lie

How do you know when you are being lied to?

Often, I don’t know. 

But when I consider the occasions when I have learned I was lied to, I notice a pattern emerging.

All lies start out as one source’s account of what happened. As long as I believe the source’s account, the lie appears to be true. Yet, as soon as I expand my perspective by trying to validate the source’s account, I begin the process of exposing the Lie.

Another pattern I noticed is the bigger the lie, the harder the liar works to get me to accept their version of events. In these occasions, any effort to explore alternative explanations are strongly discouraged. 

Consider a standard Lie:

“When my two sons, Patrick and Matthew, were young they loved candy. We used to keep a candy dish on the coffee table reserved for guests. One day, I entered the living room and noticed the candy dish was empty. I called Patrick and Matthew into the room and asked: “Do either of you know what happened to the candy in the candy dish?” Patrick said, “I don’t know.” Matthew said, “I saw Patrick eating the candy and when I asked for some, he wouldn’t give me any.” Patrick immediately denied eating any candy. Someone was obviously lying. As it turned out, I happened to notice Matthew’s pants pocket seemed full of something. I asked Matthew to empty his pockets. Grudgingly, Matthew emptied his pockets revealing the empty candy wrappers from the candy dish.”

In the simple example, Matthew’s lie could only be true if I explored no further than his account of what happened.

Now consider an outrageous Lie:

“In the case of Genocide by Israel in Gaza, the claim is baseless and without merit.”[stated 1/3/2024 by John Kirby, Spokesperson, U.S. National Security Council]

In order for this statement to be true, an objective assessment of the case submitted to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa would reveal no substantive evidence was provided to support the claim. Yet on January 26th, 2024, 15 out of 17 judges of the ICJ ruled the evidence provided by South Africa was sufficient to support a claim that Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza. 

In this severe example, the statement by John Kirby was a desperate attempt to invalidate any consideration of an alternative explanation. Why? Because any objective assessment would prove John Kirby’s statement was completely untrue.

Have you observed this pattern elsewhere?

The key take-away is to always get perspective on all explanations we are given, especially when we are told no other explanation is valid.

Categories
Personal Growth Philosophy Spirituality

Earth Critters

One truth I have realized is Mother is a word for all that give us life. Beyond my birth mother, I live because…

I have sunshine. 

Thank you Mother Sun…

I have water. 

Thank you Mother Ocean, River, Lake, Stream…

I have nutrient food. 

Thank you Mother Earth, Animals, Plants, Farmers, Harvest Workers, Food Distribution Workers, Grocers…

I have shelter.

Thank you Mother Trees, Mother Earth, Homebuilder, Construction Workers, Innovators, Electricians, Utility Workers…

I have biodiversity.

Thank you Mother Gut Critters that support my digestion, Mother Bees that facilitate pollination, Mother Nature that supports my ecology…

I have so many Mothers to be thankful for. 

Now imagine what Mother Sun sees when she looks at the Earth?

A beautiful blue marble housing trillions of Earth critters. 

We are all children of the Universe. 

Each sovereign because we are empowered to make choices and unified by our shared symbiotic existence.

Categories
Personal Growth Philosophy Spirituality

When I Meet a Stranger…

…what I see is a person who:

may be the next best friend I ever had,

may be the lover I need in my life right now,

may teach me the next important lesson I needed to know,

may offer the simple gesture that makes my day,

may be one of many people who produce the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the car I drive, and support the life I live.

What do I see when I meet a stranger?

I see a part of me I did not yet know.

Categories
Personal Growth Spirituality

What is intended for me…

I was raised to think excellence required working the hardest. So as I grew up, I entered my career prepared to power through any mountain that appeared in my path.

Time passed, and I started to notice all those moved mountains did not lead me to the promised land.

The hard road simply led to more hard road.

Finally, I realized the resistance that stood in my way was not a sign to work harder.

The resistance was the guardrail on the path of my highest purpose…

The demarcation line between what is intended for me and everything else.

Categories
Personal Growth Social Evolution

The Tribe is Gathering

Like minded, peace loving, freedom seeking people are finding each other by filtering out the trolls, liars, manipulators, propagandists, narcissists, and hoarders from our physical and virtual networks.

The problem is the powers that be demand control of everyone and everything. Therefore, gathering in our own social networks is not enough. We must build a critical mass of people willing to stop feeding the beast who lives on the work we produce.

First step to building the critical mass is to reject the labels we have been given that encourages us to hate each other.

All identity based labels obscure our shared humanity.

Marketing labels, sports affiliations, business associations, community/state/national identification, political classifications, religious/gender/racial/pronoun & cultural identifiers all should be set aside so we can finally accept and mutually respect the sovereignty in each of us.

We set these labels aside not to deny our own personal preferences, but to create solidarity on the basis we each are empowered to make our own choices.

Rejecting our labels reveals who benefits from the divisiveness dominating our societies.

Like the sunrise after a very dark night, each of us will see how completely we have been distracted by manufactured consent.

Nothing in nature lives independently.

Freedom is a virtue because having it supports a life worth living.

As our tribe gathers, we reclaim our sovereignty by networking globally while living and buying as locally as possible.

Categories
Personal Growth

When No One’s Left to Blame…

I was so certain it was all their fault. 

We all said it. We all knew it. And we gladly made them pay.

Yet the next day I woke and nothing was better.

So I found another victim…I hurt another target…and still nothing had changed.

When they offered me a new scapegoat, there was no joy in making them pay.

I had finally noticed this stranger looked no better off than me. 

He had been lied to…just like me. 

She hungered for justice…just like me.

They were suffering…just like me.

At last I realized…they were just like me.

Categories
Personal Growth Spirituality

What I want…

I want to celebrate my sovereignty within the context of our universal oneness…

In alignment…

In balance…

In sustainable perpetual abundance.

Why?

Because this is the Truth about who we are.